


Entropy

by Left_Handed_Rick



Category: Pocket Mortys, Rick and Morty
Genre: Coming of Age, Disillusionment, Economics, Emotional Intimacy, Emotional Maturity, Essential Workers, Fear of Heights, Fluff, Gen, Nostalgia, Puberty, Starry Citadel AU, Strangers to Friends, We live in a society, Wholesome, Youth, call of the void, citadel with extra steps, class politics, how the other half lives, literal garbage fic, literal human resources, rated AU for Golden, rated t for teen angst, social distancing, working-class blues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:34:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 28,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24051403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Left_Handed_Rick/pseuds/Left_Handed_Rick
Summary: "Entropy takes what it will. Eventually, it'll take everything."
Relationships: Morty Smith & Morty Smith, Rick Sanchez & Morty Smith, Slick Morty/Specs Morty
Comments: 17
Kudos: 22
Collections: Interconnected Fics from The Starry Citadel AU





	1. Nothing Gold Can Stay

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sketchymess Adventures](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Sketchymess+Adventures).



> _Dedicated to[Sketchy](https://s-k-e-t-c-h-y-m-e-s-s.tumblr.com/tagged/garbage+rick), whose unexpected friendship, much like the characters in this story, was found at the edges of Tumblr when life got heavy for us both. We all float on alright. _
> 
> Fic Extras:  
> ✦ [Fic Art & Endnotes](https://starry-citadel-au.neocities.org/entropy.html)  
> ✦ [Youtube Playlist ](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrWLuvbMN7cCprpKqphCJ9n1TOqQMq1Hi)  
> ✦ Follow Along [Spotify Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0EYaJbgzidfZBgllTY8kXr?si=T1aeIOW6Th6N6uLG4sIkKw)  
> ✦ [Slick’s Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0yvYMxGQ4trFnMqy3uxU0b?si=b31UHW49Q7qUKEURInRKeQ)  
> 
> 
> ### Author's Note/Introduction
> 
> Like all the Starry AU fics, you’re gonna get that existential angst with this one, but I think this is the most upbeat story I’ve written. It's a good wholesome genfic adventure that explores the value of finding friendships in low places, and the rewards of working through mountains of your collective garbage. 
> 
> Garbage Rick was a character and a moment on[ tumblr created by Sketchy](https://s-k-e-t-c-h-y-m-e-s-s.tumblr.com/tagged/garbage+rick). Slick Morty, and the themes of this fic are a total homage to coming of age stories set in the 50-60’. The song selection is from American Underground, Chill & Indie Rock. And as always, there’s a science corner in this fic! 
> 
> You can read all of my very self-indulgent fic meta over on the [fic page. ](https://starry-citadel-au.neocities.org/entropy.html)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“The increase of disorder, or entropy, is what distinguishes the past from the future, giving a direction to time.” —Steven Hawking_

#### 

“So you...uh, jumped.”

Rick wasn't asking a question. It was obvious the kid had jumped through the fucking portal thinking it was going to kill him.

Once, Rick had eavesdropped on a pair of himself laughing over their lunch break. He learned that _apparently_ , some Rickhole had once told his Morty that if he threw his most valuable possession into the garbage portal, his wish would be fulfilled. The old Rick’s tale had become popular among Citadel Mortys, and his coworkers heartlessly snickered at the stupidity of it while celebrating their collective gain.

Only a fuckin’ Morty would have believed such bullshit.

A few feet away from Rick, the bristly youth had settled himself into the surrounding garbage. Mimicking the sharp edges of a jackknife, Morty neatly folded his knees against his torso, securing a pair of thin arms around his thighs. A pair of sharp eyes flicked accusingly toward the garbage worker, and Morty scoffed before turning his line of sight toward the underside of the wishing well. He tucked his chin further into himself as he watched the endless rain of garbage falling through it.

Rick sighed as he brushed off the layers of dust from his social skills. He’d always preferred to keep to himself. The quiet line of work on the Citadel had suited his life of solitude. He never cared for small talk – never had much to say when he did. In a very unpracticed attempt to hold a simple conversation, Rick cleared his throat.

"—Yeah." Morty interrupted Rick’s start with a short quip, "I jumped."

Offering nothing further, Morty frowned into the sky with a furrowed brow, then unfolded his body to bury his face into the denim of his jeans. Bracing himself, he laced a pair of fingers over the back of his neck as an angry, distressed growl forced its way through gritted teeth. The exasperated cry was a failed attempt to mask the sound of the boy’s tears, and Rick could do nothing but invasively listen to the boy’s private suffering.

He averted his gaze in discomfort, shifting his attention toward the radioactive wormhole the Morty had fallen through. The Green Sun was everything a Garbage Rick’s life revolved around as it perpetually rotated above. Below, a disembodied radio voice traveled over the chaotic landscape.

_“Stand Ba-AUGH-ck!”_

A fresh storm of garbage tumbled through the mouth of the portal, and Rick studied the landscape, holding his breath in a momentary transfixed awe, as he took in the superficially natural phenomena.

Rick couldn’t help but think the matter looked like falling stars. Spinning into the orbitless freefall of artificial gravity, the debris fell through clouds of suspended particulate and pollution. Their hard, jagged edges caught momentary bursts of light as the fragments languidly littered the landscape of discarded materials below.

Beautiful, however, was just as fleeting; an unintended by-product of process. 

Rick supposed that over time, the charm of the waste flats had grown on him. He couldn't remember the last time he had seen a clear view of the stars only occasionally visible in Rickport. The industrial district's shit-air quality had snuffed them out entirely. In the end, _pretty looking garbage_ was all he had access to, but it was dangerously easy to stare too long at The Green Sun. Rick knew better than to project himself into imagined worlds beyond his reach, or to hoard the pieces of interdimensional lives that had been discarded from the sky. The vortex of liquor-like portal fluid swirled like the sun of an upturned bottle; time and gravity intoxicatingly circled the drain, setting the course into something permanent.

Ricks had addictive personalities: a predisposition to compulsive hoarding behavior. A few of himself—known by the bottom-feeders as Garbage _Collector_ Ricks—tirelessly searched for the promise of treasure in a bottomless pit of trash. Sure, he’d pocketed a few rare finds like anyone else, but not much down here really held value higher than the cost of fencing it (especially when they had to go through junkyard Rick)—hell, even organic waste in the form of a dead body wasn’t even that novel anymore, but coming across a _Morty? A living Morty?_ Rick took a steadying sip from his flask before turning his attention back to the _farthest thing from a disposable_ he’d ever come across on-shift (even if the teen had naively wished himself to be).

Streaks of green and gold light slipped across the strands of Morty’s well-oiled hair as his body continued to tremble in silence. The youth looked clean-cut—honing a hard-edged personality that was just sharp enough to make it feel dangerous.

Rick didn’t usually think of garbage as something to be ashamed of, but the youth’s sharp presence caused Rick to reflect on the surface of his own hands; more aware of the dirt on them than usual. _At what point had he become so comfortable being covered in filth?_

For Garbage Worker Ricks, rolling around in their own shit was a daily fact of life as much as living under the green sun, and it wasn't until some _surface-level citizen_ came along to make him aware that he was _lower class_ —related to the literal garbage of society—that Rick was made to feel a sense of shame for who or where he was.

While the Morty hadn’t said anything to the garbage worker, his slicked up presence sure as hell did. Rick pocketed his fists, suddenly remembering the socially constructed emotion of embarrassment. He’d always preferred the unflinching reality of his work, and as the vulnerable teen continued to gather himself beside the older man, Rick was uncomfortably put at ease.

“Hey, Grease—” Rick began.

“—It’s not Grease, it’s _Slick_!” Immediately, the teen corrected him, and Rick frowned at the brash attitude. The kid was looking hard to pick a fight with someone, and Rick sure as hell wasn’t going to take the bait.

“Yeah. Okay, _Slick_.” He rolled his eyes, but accommodated the teen’s demand, “Wanna share why you’re down here crying—”

“—I’m not crying— _fucking old-timer!_ ” Morty lifted his arm to Rick and, with his forearm and hand, gestured some kind of vulgarity toward him. Rick didn’t understand the Citi-kid’s slang, but he was able to understand the universal meaning behind it. Morty glowered toward Rick with standoffish intent before suddenly taking the first verbal swing.

“This is all your fault!”

Morty hadn’t wanted to be saved, Rick realized, and at the confrontational admittance, the teen quickly broke his gaze away making it clear that he wasn’t interested in whatever the garbage worker had to say. Their conversation had ended before it even had the chance to begin.

Mildly annoyed, Rick tightened each gloved finger around his flask, regretting that even once, he had stared at the green sun and wished for something extraordinary to fall from it into his mundane life. He should have known better.

_How did they get here?_

***

_“Everybody’s workin’ for the weekend!”_

_It had been just another boring, predictable day in the centrifugal grind. Rick sat behind the operations panel of his front loader, singing and swinging his shoulders along with the Citadel Radio as he toggled the levers._

_Rick hung his torso from the side of the machine for a quick half-assed circle check when he caught sight of something plunging toward the surface with a bit more velocity than the surrounding material. He ducked his head back into the heavy equipment to check out his dash readings. The radar had locked onto an unidentified falling object that it had categorized as organic matter._

_He leaned forward, squinting over the dash to try and make out what it was. The view through his front loader’s window slowly expanded as it focused on the object, and Rick tapped his foot, wishing the company would give him a cybernetic eye, instead of making him rely on outdated equipment._

_Impatient, he poked his head out of his machine once again, and barely caught a glimpse of the signature yellow shirt, before his body jumped out of his station and broke into an instinctual sprint. He could interfere with the mass’s inertia if he could reach the body in time._

_He bounded beneath the mouth of the green sun with every bit of force he had, tackling the teens from freefall moments before he made an impact. He cradled the teen’s twig-like frame against his neutrally buoyant garbage uniform, bracing for a second impact as they crashed into a pile of trash._

_Despite the counter-mechanisms of his suit, the approximate gravity had still left Rick feeling like he’d been thrown to the ground. The force of the impact had knocked the air completely from his chest, leaving him gasping and coughing as he tried to swallow a full breath of air. His arms tightened around the body as he continued to strain, hacking out whatever shit the sprint had stirred up in his lungs._

_Finally able to take a full breath of air, Rick let his head fall back onto the pile of trash with a winded groan. He slung a gloved arm over his forehead with a heavy sigh of relief, and waited for the sense of vertigo and disorientation to subside while his other arm protectively cradled the youth who stirred to consciousness above him._

_Similarly disoriented, the green radium luster of the Morty’s eyes flicked with confusion around the surrounding wasteland, but a moment of clarity crashed over him as he pushed himself up from Rick’s chest. The youth exhaled his breath in a sharp heave as if it had been robbed from his lungs. His small frame curled into itself, gasping as it searched for air._

_Tears welled at the bulging corners of the Morty’s eyes before he strained to clench them shut in denial. He clenched his hand into the small shape of a shaking fist, and with a sudden strangled scream, punched the padded wall of the garbage worker's chest._

_Rick frowned, opening his mouth to give Morty a piece of his mind, but the youth’s voice interjected itself between them. It desperately choked out a series of inaudible mumbles and aimless, he punched a second fist into the sound of another broken cry. Rick evasively shifted beneath the teen, anticipating another angry blow. but the teen's face unexpectedly crumpled into a series of hard-fought sobs._

_Finally, like a discarded piece of garbage, the Morty's hand fell in resignation onto Rick's chest._

_“It’s your fault!”_

_Screaming into the abyss, yet unable to say anything at all; the universe was deafening in its overwhelming indifference to the entropy of its own design._

_***_

"Yeah.” Rick compromised, letting out a pressured sigh, “Guess it is.”

He may have interrupted the force of gravity for the teen, but the crushing weight of reality continued to press against the youth, and unable to escape, Morty was actively being shaped by that force as he continued to live and breathe.

Rick chewed the inside of his cheek, unsure of how to offer comfort without denying the harsh reality the teen had found himself in. Existence was pain, and continued suffering was the unintended consequence of Rick having saved Morty’s life.

He had one job (and it wasn’t this). A Garbage Rick wasn’t equipped to handle a fuckin’ _Morty in distress._ All things considered, he was probably the _last_ Rick for the job. Barely able to handle _himself_ in distress.

At a loss, he pulled his blue-collar hat from the always-messy strands of hair and wiped the accumulating sweat from his forehead. The cool air pressed against his brow as Rick searched out a place to sit among the debris. He found it—a large beam had settled into the garbage like a felled tree, and with a tired groan, Rick lowered himself onto the “natural” surface of the Citadel’s structure.

The Morty had succeeded in calming himself down, but in a continuous attempt to suppress his _not-tears_ , the teen breathed in a series of slow elongated hissing sounds. Rick forced an emotionally unintelligent smile and tried to lighten the mood with a change of subject.

"Heh, y-you sound like the broken steam valve in sector X.”

Morty didn't respond, and Rick half-heartedly forced another nervous laugh as he attempted to explain, “...some Rickhole slapped some duct tape over it. Heh, didn't help much—”

"—Ugh, jeez." Morty turned his body further away from the garbage worker, “Learn to take a hint, y-y’know?”

The hairs on Rick’s arms rose, but it wasn’t because of Morty’s abrasive response. Rick felt the familiar prickling tug of a barometric wave as it moved over his body like the swell of a changing tide. The atmospheric pressure around them was slipping, and he quickly drew his attention to the Rickter Graph on his wrist as the near-imperceptible readings began to register in real-time.

With a frown, he scanned the surrounding magnetic activity levels and double-checked the gravitational pressure sensors before stealing a quick glance toward his Citi-slicker. The self-deprecating teen had visibly settled himself into the surrounding garbage, completely oblivious to the surrounding threat of danger.

Bottom feeders were equipped to handle the Waste Flats. Along with a natural CFC disposition, they were trained to react quickly to circumstances using their knowledge of the environment and standard-issue gear to survive each workday.

Regardless of how tough this Morty _thought_ he was, without an escort through this literal shithole, he wasn't going to survive third-shift on his own (not that it really seemed like he wanted to).

This place would bury him alive if Rick let it.

 _Whelp, he’s your problem now._ Rick groaned once more, feeling the emotion down to his already tired toes. The landscape of their distant horizon swelled in real-time to Rick’s readings, and their subtle motion exhausted into a churning rumble. The echo reached them first before the Citadel-shaking vibrations traveled into an urgent tremor that rippled without warning beneath their feet.

“Ah Jeez!” Morty quickly searched out Rick's presence, unable to hide the honest expression in his moment of panic. He instinctively moved closer to Rick. “W-What was that?”

“Entropy,” Rick answered in a matter-of-fact voice. He would have smirked and teased the teen for suddenly caring about the threat of danger, but his gaze was entirely fixed on the cheap-ass work equipment he was given. He smacked the device with his gloved hand to keep it running, then squinted at the screen as he continued to interpret the newest readings from his device.

"We're circling the drain." He further explained.

Always changing, the centrifugal force of the Citadel moved layers of garbage beneath their feet and compounded by artificial gravity, the directionless, ever-shifting fault lines of the Waste Flats formed and faded with each moment. Seemingly stable structures suddenly bottomed out—tearing open chasms and crumbling away into miles-deep sinkholes. Stressed faults violently slipped against one another. The environment could instantaneously move mountains of garbage, or set into motion avalanches and storms of trash— and all of that was just the surface. A single misstep could bury a Rick into the underground gravitational currents.

Out here, nothing was certain. Nothing was guaranteed.

Not even the next moment. Holding his breath, Rick watched the seismic readings optimistically drop off until the threat of danger had passed with enough certainty. He lifted his hat to scrub his forehead once more with a sigh of relief. _Today had already been stressful enough._

“We’re good. For now, anyways” Rick glanced up to Morty, and reassured the teen before changing the subject. He laughed, suddenly remembering the terrified expression on the kid’s face. Looked like there was still some fight left in him after all.

“Ugh.” Still sitting, Rick grinned toward Morty as he reached into the lining of his jacket, “That might as well have been the sound of my stomach, amirite?”

It had been close enough to lunchtime, and the safest time to re-up was after a good trashquake. Rick fished through his oversized coat pockets to reveal a large sub sandwich. He ripped it in half.

“Hungry?” He extended his hand to the teen as if he were trying to earn the trust of a stray dog, giving it a slight wiggle in his hand.

“No.” Morty huffed, folding his arms over the betraying sound of his stomach with a scowl.

“Look.” Rick frowned. He was trying to give the kid his space, but they really didn’t have a ton of time for this. He pushed the sandwich into the teen’s chest, “Take it now, or grandpa’s gonna let you starve when you change your mind later—.”

“—Fuck _off!”_ Morty swore into an outburst, slapping his hand at the sandwich and sending it flying into deconstructed pieces.

"—You. Piece of solid waste! Are you _trying_ to get your ass kicked!?"

"—I’m not your grandkid, Rick!” Morty glared, “I-I don't _need_ your help—you fuckin. Crusty old shit! 'N’ I don't _want_ your pity!"

"You talk to your Grandpa with that mouth—"

"—however the fuck I want, jeezer!" Morty cut Rick off, “Go fuck yourself about it.”

“Jeezus, kid." Rick didn't even know how to respond to the quickly escalated situation. His voice softened as he defended his actions with uncertainty, 'I was just offering you a bite to eat—”

“And _I said_ , I didn’t want it!” Rolling his shoulders, the teen turned his entire body away from Rick and hunched over his knees into a squat once more.

 _Fucking Teenagers._ Rick exasperated, nearing his limit as he shucked off his work gloves, tucking them into the inner lining of his uniform. He dug through the oversized jacket pockets to retrieve his flask and took a generous swig to help himself calm down and think, then another, despite knowing the extra pull would make him short before the day’s end. He'd seen a few desperate Garbage Ricks, sifting through the trash for half-full liquor bottles. Even for the Ricks scraping the bottom of the barrel, it wasn't a good look.

Still irritated, he shoved the flask back into his pocket, mumbling a string of expletives as he reached down to the mess of garbage at his feet. He collected the nearby pieces strewn across the trash-floor, and carefully reassembled his meal. Inspecting the reconstruction, he picked away a few pieces of dirt while resigning himself to the additional seasoning of dust, and spitefully ignored the sound of Morty’s growling stomach as he took his first bite.

“Look, you little...” Rick trailed, mouthing off to the teen who watched him with an expression of both awe and disgust. Rick judgmentally rolled his eyes. At least he finally had the kid’s attention.

“...I'm not trying to help you!" Ricks’s voice lost it’s gentleness as he spoke and swallowed through a mouthful of food, "I'm a _Garbage Rick!_ Probably the _last_ Rick you wanted anything to do with—Y'know, I'm not exactly thrilled about this whole thing either, but being your gramps? That’s not my job.”

Rick finished his sandwich and uselessly wiped his bare hands against his pants as he leaned over the mosaic of discarded material below. He searched for the right words in the compacted conglomerate of their lives feeling like he understood garbage better than he would ever understand people.

“I've been working these hands to the bone longer than you've been alive."

Rick stared into his weathered open palms, tracing the lines of entrenched dirt that seemed to map out his past and future in the same way the central finite curve had.

''All I have left’s a shitty perspective,” Rick balled his hand into a fist and shamefully pocketed the dirt on his hands.

“Feeling like that? Like Garbage?” Rick turned to Morty, feeling a bit more sympathetic as he explained, “It doesn't make you special, kid. It’s just life.”

Morty was uncharacteristically silent. The teen quickly turned his gaze away from the older man before preoccupying himself with fixing his already neatly rolled-up sleeves. After a moment, he patted his pockets, before nervously passing a hand over his slicked-back hair avoiding eye contact. Eventually his act caved, and the teen's golden-green eyes flicked curiously toward the older man.

“Yeah? Wh-What do you know?” Morty's voice challenged with an uncertain waiver.

“I'm still a genius, kid," Rick defensively huffed at the teen. He might have been assigned to the lower level, but he was still a Rick—he’d bet his left nut that he understood as much as the next one.

"You're tryin’ like hell to put up a good front, but it doesn't take half a Morty's brain to figure out that you're just some kid who's scared shitless—"

"—I'm not a chicken!" Morty suddenly rose to his feet, looking for another fight. Rick rolled his eyes at the obvious bluster, rising to his own feet as he stepped closer to the teen.

"Y-You sure?” he goaded poking his dirty gloved finger into the teen’s chest, “Cause to me, it sure as hell looked like you were running from something.”

“I—I wasn't running away!” Morty stepped backward as the garbage worker intentionally invaded his space, “I was—I was—"

Morty stumbled on his words. He bit his lip, casting his gaze down to the garbage collecting at his feet before balling his hands into fists at his side until they shook.

"I'm not afraid!" He shouted, "I've never been scared of throwing my life away! I just—"

Morty stopped himself, but after a silent pause, sighed, resigning himself to the surrounding reality as he muttered into the space between them, "I just wanted it all to matter. For once in my life, I just—"

Morty attempted to find the right words, but eventually settled on repeating the same ones with growing uncertainty and frustration, "I just wanted it to be worth something, Y'know? Whatever. I mean?—A Rick wouldn't get it."

Rick had gotten too close to the kid, and suddenly vulnerable, Morty took another step backward in an attempt to run away. Instead, he slipped on the slick pages of a discarded skin mag and skidded into the mess of garbage below.

A smug look of satisfaction spread across Rick’s face as the too-clean presence finally ate some dirt. Morty quickly pulled himself into a sitting position, hissing in pain as he reached into his pocket to reveal a stiletto switchblade. With another curse, he pulled the skinned knee toward his chest and unflinchingly parted the frayed edges of denim before raking the blade's edge over the open wound. He flicked the pieces of dirt and blood from his piece of steel before wiping it clean against his pants. Rick watched the teen, impressed by his demonstrated tolerance for pain.

Beyond him, flecks of light continued to glimmer through the hazy atmosphere, and seemingly alive, a distant mechanical hum rose from beneath the wasteland’s debris. Restless remnants of trash shifted through rising clouds of dust as the vibrant burst of energy swallowed everything it touched into the swirling quicksand-heart of the machine.

Entropy was the cosmic process of gradually deconstructing a life, and the wishing portal was how Mortys attempted to make sense of it. Mortys understood conservation of energy —the idea that nothing in the multiverse was free—but their wishful thinking of throwing away their most valuable possessions was instead, a pointless bid for control over a process that didn’t give a fuck about what mattered to them.

Their act of desperation was just as meaningless as Garbage Collector Ricks; obsessively searching out and hoarding the very same treasures on the other side.

"I'm a Rick. But I get it, kid."

They were two sides of the same coin.

His jump hadn't been that far off from the teen's.

***

Rick didn't have much of an outlook toward the trajectory of his own life.

If he had been smart about it, he could've used his intelligence to actually do something with the single, finite, non-renewable resource he owned.

Although he understood the economic concept (that his time was inherently more valuable than money. That currency was only ever a tool to measure the value of time), Rick Sanchez was too busy living in the moment to think about his future.

Supply and demand. When he was younger, he had time to waste.

Looking back. Projecting forward, it was hard to know what effect he’d had, but in his book, the most valuable thing he’d ever created was his daughter.

A few fresh Rick-workers in the flats would give him the occasional glimpse into her life; fragmented narratives of different timelines coming together to paint a portrait of his infinitely broken little girl.

Beth was only six when Rick had taken a Job on the Citadel as a debtor. Now, with nothing but time left, the garbage worker found himself reminiscing his daughter's life more than he'd ever given thought to his own.

He lived vicariously through the imagined futures he had paid for.

_"She's a drummer in a punk band! The Beths!? Holy shit, it's named after her? I'm glad our little rebel girl found an outlet."_

_"That's our baby girl! She got accepted into med school! On scholarship!"_

_"Knocked up on Prom Night? Who the fuck is Jerry?"_

_"She's fucking stayed with him!? What the hell is she trying to prove?"_

_"Made the switch to vet school. Thinks she'd be too busy as a surgeon. Doesn't wanna be an absent parent... Great, she's stuck with a family she doesn't want, and is too fucked up from our shit-choices as a parent to bail."_

_"Summer? That's a good name. Feels Warm. Dependable. Shit, remember Earth-seasons?"_

_"Jerry lost another job? Fuck. So much for Beth wanting to work less. She's the only one reliably putting any money on the table."_

_"She's drinking again? Not as bad as we were around that age, right? Worse? Damn. She's good at hiding it. Guess she learned something from us after all."_

_"A few of us Ricks think she kept drinking into the third trimester before she found out she'd been knocked up. I mean—not much difference between hangovers and morning sickness."_

_"I mean, you’ve seen her second kid? Morty? Basically named after fetal alcohol syndrome if you ask me. Got so bad she had to detox at the hospital."_

_"Yeah, she divorced Jerry in a couple timelines. Found another in a few more. Doesn't seem much happier for it."_

_"Heard she was allergic to the shit in a handful of timelines. Hey? Maybe that's your Beth, eh? Lucky you! You baby girl’s never gonna have to deal with alcoholism."_

_"Heard she used this soulmate-dating app to hook up with a dude that looks just like us. Some architect named Tad. Figures. With all the daddy issues we unloaded on her… Yeesh."_

When Rick thought of his own daughter—the Beth of his own timeline—trying to imagine her infinitely finite future felt like gazing into the limitless potential and failure of a human being. Her existence would forever be enigmatic to him; a perpetual promise of simultaneous hope and fear.

When anything was possible, his memories were the only thing that felt real enough to hold onto.

_"Daddy!"_

_He held close to his chest the memory of joy, overflowing from her tiny body as she barrelled into his arms. He treasured the feeling of scooping her up, and holding her above him like the brightest star in the sky. Beth smiled and squealed into a high-pitched fit of giggles as he spun her around him._

_“I love daddy!”_

_She was the center of his universe and in a moment of absolute entropy Rick understood the axiom of truth about his existence. That he was capable of loving with such ferocity, uncertainty, and purity._

_But love alone didn’t make him a good parent._

_***_

#### 

"Dammit Beth! Where the fuck are my keys!"

"I threw them away! Don't be mad!"

Rick groaned, flipping the lid from the kitchen trash in a hurry. Beth tugged at the button-down shirt at his side as he picked through the contents trying to keep his work clothes clean.

"Daddy, don't go! I don't want you to go to work!"

"Are you gonna get a job? No? Oh, you're not old enough? Well, Sweetie, who do you think has gotta pay for all this shit. Daddy's gotta work to pay the bills and you're not helping by throwing away his keys!"

Beth produced a pouty bottom lip that long ago, she’d learned how to manipulate to get what she wanted. Normally Rick would give in, but today, he was short on patience.

"I don't have time to play games, baby. There’s a lot riding on today—"

“—Listen to me!" Beth cried out, "My stomach—!"

"—Is as strong as this garbage bag. Daddy promises—you can handle it."

Rick lifted the garbage bag from the bin and the plastic ripped open, spilling garbage across the kitchen floor. Beth fell silent in shock, before immediately starting to cry. Rick groaned.

"My sto-huh-mach!"

Rick looked at his watch and sighed, tossing the empty trash liner to the ground—adding it to the rest of the garbage. He ran fingers through his hair, skimming the surface as something glinted in the corner of his eye. Rick sighed in relief, reaching down to fish out his keys from the trash, ignoring the tiny hands which were trying to catch his attention. He shrugged her away with a quick pat on her head. He had more shit to do than he had time.

"Be good—and clean this shit up for me. Stay out of trouble while I'm—.”

"—I don't wanna be like the garbage, daddy!!"

"Yeah, well, welcome to the club."

By the end of the day, Beth’s stomach ache had turned into green vomit. Rick had come home from work to find his daughter pale and shivering on the makeshift bed of garbage he had left. Right where he had left her.

They didn’t have health insurance, but that was the last thing on Rick’s mind as he rushed his baby girl to the emergency room. She was admitted for emergency surgery and following, the General Surgeon presented Rick with a missing key, reassuring the single parent that this was common for her age.

She was smart, but she was still a kid, and Rick replayed their conversation that morning, suddenly realizing the lengths his little girl had gone to keep him from leaving her again. She must have only swallowed one before giving up on the idea and opting for the trash.

In the end, however, she got her way. Daddy lost his job the next day after having no other option but asking for time off to look after her. Guaranteed family medical leave was a promise as empty as false assurance. Beth, meanwhile, had become enamored with the doctors who had treated her, and decided that she too, wanted to become a doctor. Not just any doctor. A surgeon.

Unemployed and pouring over the growing pile of medical bills on their kitchen table, Rick watched his daughter's new fixation grow as she recovered. From the other room, he listened to her play doctor with her “sick” teddy bear. She asked her patient what was wrong, then in the most compassionate act of service she could provide, Beth pretended to surgically remove the bear’s heart.

Apparently the doctors had taught her how to cut out what hurt the most. Or maybe that had been him.

“I’m gonna be a Surgeon when I’m big!”

"Yeah—you gonna pay for medical school?" Rick caustically laughed, minimizing his stress with a heavy slap of reality, "Cause, I’m not gonna be able to afford it."

The next day Beth politely negotiated chores for allowance, because she needed to start saving money to be a doctor. Rick didn’t even have the cash to humor her. She didn’t even understand what an unemployment check or the food bank was. But when she pouted with that bottom lip, he agreed with a sigh and scooped her into a hug.

He’d manage to figure something out. They always did.

He wondered how long he could shield his child from the financial reality of how their world worked. How long it would be before the kids at school teased her for being poor. Before she wasn’t allowed to spend time with the cool kids because they wore name brands. Before she blamed herself because Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny couldn’t afford to put her on the nice list, or before she saw the zeros spanning the paper of a medical bill, and blamed herself for how hard Rick would have to work to dig themselves out of their debtor’s prison.

He blamed himself. For Beth’s mom walking out on them. For falling short at being a single parent. For not being able to give her anything more than everything he already had and still coming up short.

That afternoon at the kitchen table was the first time Rick truly considered the human cost of a life. How the value of his future was unfairly intertwined with what would become Beth's.

The solution was simple economic theory: a life of hard labor on the Citadel, in exchange for someone else's terrifyingly infinite future: slavery with extra steps.

It was a raw deal, but still better than anything Earth could offer. Drowning in debt that felt as real as the unimaginable numbers printed on paper, Rick made the hardest choice of his life.

Beth was everything to him.

He needed to secure her future more than he needed time or money in his own.

She was Rick's daughter. He needed to know her future had options, more than he needed her to be part of his.

_***_

_“Beth. Sweetie. This Job. It’s gonna give us everything we wanted!”_

_"You’re never gonna come back—just like Mom!” Beth sobbed, overwhelmed with emotion, “I don't want Daddy to leave!"_

_Rick hugged his daughter, feeling the desperation in her tiny hands as she clung to his presence. He held back tears, not wanting her to see him cry. One day, when she was bigger, she’d understand._

_“This is the best shot we have to do something right, sweetie. Promise me—you’ll do your best too.”_

_“I don’t want to be a doctor anymore! I want Daddy!” Beth protested, and for a moment, Rick wondered if he were making the right choice. Cupping her cheek, he brushed a tear away with his thumb and kissed her forehead._

_“Whenever you miss me. I’ll be right there, alright?—working right inside the big dipper. As constant as a star... From there, I'll be able to find you too.”_

_Unable to answer, Beth shook her head and nodded at the same time._

_Rick looked to her grandparents. It was strange how he’d somehow built a better relationship with them, than he ever had with Beth’s mother. But he could trust them to take care of her. Raise her right, or at the very least better than he ever could. He was sending them into early retirement after all, and maybe—just maybe— the money would bring her mom back. He ruffled the hair on her head before giving her shoulder a tight, parting squeeze._

_“Make me proud, baby.”_

_Often, Rick wondered if a single act could redeem him. He wondered if, over a lifetime of doing so many things wrong, he had done at least one thing right._

_He made the jump into the wishing portal._

_Glad to make the sum of his life finally add up to something._

_Glad to spend it on someone who mattered._

***

Same garbage. Different day.

The back-breaking routine of hard labor had become the only thing Rick had left in his future to look forward to, and over the years, the daily Sisyphean grind had worn the sharp-edged ego of his youth down.

He wasn’t the same Rick who’d run away from his problems on Earth, unable to face the people he most cared about. Entropy had reduced his existence to little more than a Spec of stardust floating through the endless void of space.

Existence was pain, but change and a sense of identity were the hard-earned payoffs of his continued suffering through it.

That was easy for him to think. Rick had a literal lifetime to study the changing landscape of his infinite garbage. The sulking youth beside him didn’t understand how to even look at the accumulating piles of his.

Rick empathetically chewed his lip. The sooner he was able to call it what it was, the better off he'd be.

“A high tolerance for pain is a death wish out here, kid.”

Pulling himself from his daydream, Rick surmised his thoughts to the ghost of his infinite futures. He wondered if all Mortys were angsty little assholes like this one. Teen angst was better than nothing, he supposed.

"You stop being honest about the shit that hurts to look at—that's when you stop feeling. Eventually, you stop living."

Morty said nothing, but silently pocketed his switchblade and shifted his frustrations outward. He angrily tossed a disintegrating piece of food-waste onto a hand-made sign across from him. It fell against the cardboard surface with a wet smacking sound causing the sign to momentarily vibrate before slouching back into place against the larger pile.

Ricks eyes skimmed the fading letters of what looked like a once-politically-important picket manifesto: _Ricks died to save their Mortys!_ Must have been election year on the Citadel.

“Your Rick dead?” He bluntly asked before swearing with instant regret, "Shit. That's..." Standing on garbage all day didn't necessarily remind him to step lightly over it.

"Yeah," Morty huffed, and his entire body tensed at the admission, but he willed himself into movement, refusing to settle into a single emotion. He hurled the second piece of trash into the endless sea spilling from under his body before continuing, "All five of 'em.”

Morty’s voice remained stagnant and bitter while his body grew increasingly restless. His jaw clenched as he abandoned the fresh piece of trash in his hand, and instead, decided to throw his attention toward Rick.

“What's it matter to you anyway!? Ricks don't care about Mortys.” At the abrasive accusation, Morty averted his gaze, dredging his eyes across the wasteland between them, “You all have it _so damn easy_ on the Citadel.”

The teen was still looking for a fight, but the surrounding environment had already taken a toll on him. His voice had lost had its original edge.

“Pssh, _Ricks_ and _Mortys—_ ” Rick forced a bitter laugh and rolled his eyes at the teen’s naivety, “Things are rough all over this multiverse, Ponyboy.”

“My names not—”

“—Listen. I’m just calling it like I see it. ‘N’ what you're really afraid of? It's the kind of shit that cuts deep.” Rick’s eyes flicked toward the picket sign once more, before turning back to stare at the youth. The politicized statement was a strange confirmation that he wasn’t the only Rick stupid enough to put everything on the line for something he truly believed in.

“You're afraid you _do_ matter."

“That's Not—”

"—Look. I’m not trying to pick a damn fight with you. I've got nothing left to prove—I'm down here working out my life sentence in the Rick-race we decided to call society, kid. 'N' I've seen a lot of bottom feeders come through this shithole…like you, they take one look around, shrug their damn shoulders ‘n’ say, _‘It figures’._ They think the CFC assignment only tells 'em what they already knew."

Morty was pretending not to listen, distracting himself by noncommittally picking at the surface of the garbage. Piece by broken piece, he aimlessly examined the remnants of lives beneath his feet, searching for everything and nothing within them. Garbage Rick’s eyes again returned to the picket sign: a streak of dirt, running across the sign’s length, had marred the surface. The word ‘Morty’ had taken a hit. Slick had been aiming for his own name.

Rick’s voice softened at the realization, “They think that on some fundamental level of their character, they’re garbage. That they always were, and no matter what they did or try to do...garbage is what they were always meant to be.”

Unable to stop himself, the older man stepped forward and retrieved the sign and brushed the dirt away from Morty’s name with his gloved hand.

“Hey! Cut it out!” Confused, Morty watched the garbage worker’s actions and angrily protested them. “It’s just garbage!”

“And whattabout it!?” Rick challenged as he climbed the small mountain of trash, “It’s garbage!”

Morty’s face flushed red as Rick mounted the declaration at the garbage mountain’s highest point. He put his hands in his pockets, and reflectively stared at the claim before jumping back down to the teen.

Together they stared at the erected sign like the mass gravemarker it was.

“It’s hard to see the value of anything in this metric-fuckton of literal garbage.” Rick finally admitted, “but occasionally, you get a sign.”

Morty suddenly dived toward the ground, desperately reaching to grab a bright metallic object that was jutting out from the base of their conquered mountain. He held it with a transfixed gaze, and Rick wondered if the teen had found something more precious than gold. Morty turned the treasure over in his shaking hands before protectively clutching it against his chest. His knuckles turned white.

“What is that? Some kind of music maker? A harmonica?” Rick squinted his eyes and leaned over Morty’s shoulder to get a better look..

“I didn’t—” Morty’s body trembled and he sucked in a sharp breath. His voice cracked as he stumbled over his already crumbling voice, “I didn't even have anything important to give up."

The muted haze of dust that had blanketed first-shift was finally beginning to settle, signaling to Garbage Rick that the second shift was about to start. The vibrant sound of an alarm cut through the sky as a fresh wave of garbage fell from the green sun, and with the rotation of shifts on the Citadel, the surrounding wasteland slowly devoured itself.

The distant grainy sounds of trash rustled in constant motion, and pulled by the gravitational undercurrents, a once politically-important picket sign was swallowed into the sea of white noise. Rick and Morty watched as a silence, heavier than the falling tons of trash, lingered over them.

“At the wishing portal.” Morty finally spoke, “I-I mean, the regular portal."

Morty’s voice fell into something monotone and stable, and he corrected himself with a sober sigh, "The garbage portal…"

He quietly lifted the hem of his shirt to wet cheeks, no longer making an attempt to hide his tears. Dust particulates clung to the teen's wet face and smears of dirt began to soil the once-bright yellow shirt.

Something had shifted between them, and as the youth continued to grieve, Rick momentarily caught the swirling radiant colors of Morty’s eyes. They reminded Rick of the verdigris colors of the green sun, and he wondered how long their golden colors would last.

“Nothing gold can stay, Ponyboy.”

Above them, distant flecks of garbage spun catching the radioactive colors of the swirling sun before effulgently tumbling into the mosaic-landscape of muted colors below.

"Entropy takes what it will. Eventually, it'll take everything."

In bitter silence, Morty watched on as the imagined world of his childish wish was reduced to the sobering scale of adulthood.

"It's not fair..." He quietly acknowledged, unable to hide the disappointment in his voice. He folded his arms, resting his elbows on the now grimy denim of his knees and glared into the radioactive sunset glow with a furrowed brow, "...none of this is fair."

Rick shrugged.

"Never was."


	2. Stay Golden, Ponyboy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“The arrow of time doesn't move forward forever. There's a phase in the history of the universe where you go from low entropy to high entropy. But then, once you reach the locally maximum entropy you can get to, there's no more arrow of time.” —Sean M. Carrol_

#### 

“Did they read you your Morty Rights? Can you state your dimensional ID?”

“Morty Smith. Of Dimension C-013.”

Slick kicked his feet onto the interview table, challenging the accommodating facade of the Citadel police who’d brought him into the interview room. The Morty officer offered him some water, and Slick declined.

“Can I smoke?” He requested, “Haven’t had my _daily affirmation_.”

“As soon as we’re done here,” The Rick-agent refused the teen’s request in a hidden negotiation. Slick shrugged in nonchalance and leaned back in his chair. Impatient, he began to fidget with the lip of his zippo.

He focused on the sharp sound of the metal lid as it sliced open and shut. Felt the rolling, abrasive press of his thumb that grated the metal wheel against the hard edge of flint. Listened to the angry crackle of sparks that ignited then bled into a low, burning hiss. He flicked his hand back, snuffing out the flame with another click.

It wasn’t his first time on the Citadel, and it wasn’t his first time under heat.

“Morty, thanks for coming down to chat with us. Let’s get started shall we?” The investigator Rick offered before immediately moving on. Slick held his tongue. He hadn’t even been back in the Citadel for a full day when CPF officers pulled him from daycare and dragged his ass down to the police station.

“Name’s Slick.” It was a petty grab for any foothold of power, but he took it.

The teen narrowed his eyes distrustfully toward the older man’s obfuscating agent sunglasses and, in a gesture of building rapport, the Rick-agent kindly removed them. He folded them into his pocket and attempted to make eye contact with the teen, who quickly averted his gaze.

“I’m Detective Sanchez, with the CSI, and today, I’ve got here with me, Officer Morty, from The Citadel Police Force—.”

“—Yeah. We’ve met.” Slick also refrained from making eye contact with the Morty officer who’d once slammed his head against the toilet seat in an illegal music venue in Mortytown.

It wasn’t until Slick’s runaway status from the academy scanned up, that he’d been given any respect. Even though Slick had clearly x-ed up, the police statement filed by Officer Morty himself claimed Slick was _so drunk that he’d inflicted the injury on himself._ He never wanted to see the fat sack of shit again.

“Oh good. Always good to have a familiar face in these kinds of situations.” Rick forced a smile into Slick’s tight jawline. “Let me fill you in on why you’re here, Morty.”

A Citadel Sanchez Investigator was big time, and it only made Slick more apprehensive. He'd dealt with Citadel authority enough to know that the Citadel didn’t bring in CSI unless it was serious. He nervously swallowed, trying to maintain his composure with the older man who felt like an entirely different class of Rick.

“The Morty Insurance Company has hired me to investigate the circumstances around your life insurance policy. There are some fairly suspicious indicators of fraudulent behavior—”

“Yeah,” Slick laughed at the investigator's soft touch and cut to the chase. He didn’t want to waste the time dancing around the most suspicious thing about him. “Like the line of dead Ricks attached to my Dimensional ID?”

“Uh, Yes, that’s right,” Rick cleared his throat, momentarily caught off guard, but the agent quickly recovered. “But that’s not _why_ I’m here Morty. My job today is to dig past the surface details of this case. Get to the truth of things.” Rick glanced toward his law enforcement colleague who was as standoffish as Slick from across the table, “Officer Morty, is here with me to rule out any suspicion of foul play.”

"Wonderful." Slick scoffed, pocketing his lighter in favor of a toothpick.

Either the CSI agent was gonna try to pin his last Rick with fraud or Officer shit-for-brains was gonna stick him with the murder of his Rick. Win-win for both of them. He placed the thin piece of wood between his teeth, and pressed his tongue against the sharp point. He needed something to replace the feeling of a cigarette against his lips.

He needed pain to keep him calm and focused.

“Those his?” Rick disarmingly changed the subject, asking about the metal dog tags hanging from the teen’s neck. Slick shook his head, unconsciously wrapping his hand around the metal.

“No. My Original Rick’s.” He corrected himself, “Grandpa Rick’s.”

“You must be a proud grandson.” The Government worker smiled, nodding in a gesture of respect for one of his own, “Patriotic Ricks are a rare occurrence on the curve. Not many of ‘em chose to fight in the war.”

Nostalgia settled into the teen’s chest with a dull ache and he smiled at the distant memory, “Yeah, the _‘greatest generation’._ When he was my age, he lied about how old he was for the _‘privilege’_ to go fight fascists."

Slick reminded himself to stay on his guard, and narrowed his eyes suspiciously toward the living memory of his veteran grandfather. The less he said, the better. But cheap emotional appeals weren't going to work on him, and Slick wanted the agent to know that.

"Could never live up to Gramps, though—made me feel like shit for not wanting to throw my life away in some _blaze of glory for Uncle Sam_. Thought sending me to the Citadel after his death would do me some good. Give my life some structure and purpose."

"—Looks like the Morty Academy didn't teach you how to fall in line like he'd hoped." The Morty officer chimed in with a condescending laugh, “Between five dimensional Earths and the Citadel, you’ve got a long record, C-013.” The insinuating tone immediately caught Slick’s attention and the officer continued, "Aw Jeez, you know what they say, some Mortys are born on a bad part of the curve."

“Aww Jeez,” Slick sarcastically mimed his stereotypical ‘good Morty’ behavior while biting hard against the toothpick in his mouth. His eyes defensively narrowed, and he sneered toward the corrupt officer who was protected by the Shitadel. “I dunno what to say. Takes a Morty to know one.—”

“—Don’t mind Officer Morty, kid.” The Citadel investigator interrupted, shooting a glare of his own to his law enforcement colleague. “CPF officers tend to have a shoot first ask later policy. I need your help to understand what really happened, buddy. Let’s work through this together.”

 _“Buddy?”_ Slick repeated, lifting his eyebrow to stare down the self-interested CSI agent. He’d been recycled back into the Citi too many times to trust that _anyone_ was his friend, let alone this paperwork-thin, _good grandpa_ routine. Mortys were an expendable resource on the Citadel, only as valuable as the number a Rick was willing to pay for them.

“Yeah, right.” Slick rolled his eyes. Only the good Ricks died. The Citadel was what was left.

“How about I start? Initial reports describe you being on Zorpantheon Nine with Rick C11z5. Can you tell us why you were there? Z-9 is a dangerous planet. Even for Rick-kind.”

“He was a dangerous Rick.” Slick challenged, “You think he'd tell his Morty every reason he has to take a shit?”

“He was your partner, wasn’t he?” Officer Morty interjected and Slick pointedly rolled his eyes and refrained from shooting off at the mouth.

He couldn’t believe a Morty as bought and paid for as him could still buy into that steaming ideological pile. Even the Rick-agent was just using Officer Morty's shit attitude to pull off the good cop bad cop routine, but the Rick-pig was too willfully arrogant to see it. Too busy thinking he'd been made _better than_ the other versions of himself.

The investigator betrayed no response, remaining unmoved by Slick’s confrontational attitude. It only pissed Slick off more. He contemplatively swirled the toothpick in his mouth.

“Do you remember anything out of the ordinary? About your Rick, or the circumstances surrounding his death?”

Slick sighed, his last Rick had been anything but ordinary.

“Like every other Rick. He got himself killed and the Morty-gear solid Ricks came through the emergency portal to _‘recover’_ me. Dragged me back to grandaddy daycare where I’m here, living my best life.”

“I take it you’re not a fan of your grandpa's insurance policy?” The Rick-agent lifted a curious eyebrow.

“Why would I be?” Slick scoffed, “I get portaled around the foster system of the multiverse—regardless of what I want—because _I’m a Morty: a_ fully legal citizen on the Citadel, but _somehow,_ on Earth, I’m _not old enough_ to know what’s best for myself? It's Bullshit. I’m sick of being nothing more than a paycheck to my assigned Ricks.”

“—Is that why you carry that blade? Cause you think you can take care of yourself?” Officer Morty jumped ahead of himself with the questioning. He was desperate to get Slick to confess to something he didn’t do and it only made the teen’s blood boil. There _were a few_ reasons his grandpa taught him how to handle weapons, and one of them was being unafraid of assholes who abused them.

After their run-in at The Core, Slick hadn’t let himself go anywhere without first making sure he was armed.

“According to _your reports,”_ Slick seethed, trying to keep his cool, _“_ I’m better at self-injury.”

Officer Morty’s cheeks flushed and he sputtered over himself before the investigator took charge of the conversation once more. Slick sulked in the small room that was beginning to feel more claustrophobic by the second. He felt powerless, in a way that only the Citadel could make him feel.

“Y’know Slick-a-roo, I’ve been investigating cases on the Citadel over the span of my entire career. Seen some bad Mortys. Seen even worse Ricks. You might not think you can live up to your grandfather’s legacy. But you still believe in what it stood for. Those tags resting on your heart are proof of that. I can tell you’re not the type of Morty who goes out looking for trouble.”

Emotion stirred in Slick’s chest as the CSI agent expertly coaxed a response out of him.

“I don’t go looking for trouble.” He quietly agreed, swallowing the frustrated emotions building in his throat.

It was trouble that always seemed to find him.

“But your Rick…” The investigator asserted, “He's a different story—and you have to go along with whatever he says. He’s _your Rick,_ after all. That's what the academy drills into you. _Every Rick needs a Morty._ ‘N’ no matter how far he pushes you, you have to be _grandpa’s good little soldier._ You have to keep marching.”

Slick opened his mouth, before biting back his thoughts.

“He was a dangerous Rick.” The agent pressed, using Slick's own words against him, “Do you think he could’ve gone too far? Gotten in too deep with someone?”

Slick clenched his jaw in defiance reminding himself not to fall for the agent’s interrogation tactics. Citadel authorities—usually Ricks—always pretended to be his friend, and the more Slick had opened up to them, the more they’d use whatever he shared against him.

“...Look, my Rick. He wouldn't...” Slick cautiously began, less certain of each word that fell from his mouth. His Rick didn’t have any reason to go on some fraudulent cash grab— especially from _Rick pockets_. How stupid did a Rick have to be? What the agent was saying didn’t make any sense.

“He was smarter than that.” Slick summarized, attempting to keep his answers short and to the point. Slick probably could have saved his own ass if he had played into the narrative the agent had wanted to write. It wouldn’t have mattered to Rick. He was dead.

Slick wasn’t entirely sure why he decided to defend Rick from the Agent’s accusations, even as it placed more suspicion on him. The Investigator reached across the table, and placed his hand on Slick’s shoulder, offering reassurance and understanding.

“I’m sorry, Slick. You lost a good Rick.”

Slick knew better than to fall for it. _He knew better than to fall for it, But he_ finally made eye contact with the face he’d seen decapitated. The image was still fresh in his mind. It still didn’t feel entirely real. Slick bit his lip and turned away. It was too much.

Unfair, and unjust, and maybe even unlucky, but his Ricks were dead.

“Nobody dies on purpose, Morty. Ricks get cocky and overconfident. They get themselves killed all the time, and their Mortys. They get high strung on adventures. They spin out. Do things they would _never_ do.”

“Listen.” Slick heard the emotion wavering in his now shaking voice, and he hated himself for it. “I don’t know what you’re trying to prove. But this Rick. He was a _good_ Rick, okay! _I-I would know the difference_!” Slick pushed down his rising emotions, “and I don’t care what you think happened. It’s not however you say it is!”

Officer Morty rose from his chair, slamming his fists against the table like a set of gavels.

“Listen, we got five Ricks, C-013. Five of ‘em take out Morty insurance.—”

“—My name. Is _Slick_.” In a moment, Slick’s emotions ignited into anger and the police officer denied him the opportunity to speak.

“All five of ‘em die with you on adventures ‘n’ with every Rick you make a _killing_ on the insurance.”

“You think gramps would _ever_ let me have access to my own damn money? You really are a Morty.” Slick offered a dry humorless laugh.

"Drama implants cost a premium.” The Morty officer challenged, “Improperly installed, they could make you wanna act out some sick fantasy in real life—”

“Say that again, lard ass!” Slick rose from the table and motioned to throw himself toward the police officer, “You. Son of a Rick! You want drama? I’ll crack _your_ fat fucking skull open this time—”

“—That’s enough! Officer Smith! Take a damn walk!” Rick’s stern voice shouted over the pair as the Agents hand immediately latched onto Slick's shoulder. Slick shrugged the hand away as it attempted to maneuver the teen back into his seat. He reluctantly lowered himself of his own accord as the Morty police officer momentarily looked upset at the Agent's reprimand. He quickly recovered, however, and stepped toward the door to excuse himself.

“Less paperwork for me. I’ll be keeping my eye on you, C-013.” Office Morty exited the interview room with a demeaning scoff, and Slick immediately felt himself relax as the door closed behind him. He settled into his chair, still breathing hard from the moment of adrenaline. He was ready to leave.

“Bad Morty.” Agent Rick commented, and Slick ignored him. Still fuming, he defensively moved his hand over the barcode tattoo he’d been branded with. It was just some illegal Pocket Morty Mod—he had no idea how much they cost! His second to last Rick hadn’t even asked Slick if he’d wanted to get it!

It _had_ made him annoying and melodramatic, but it had never made him want to commit _literal murder_.

It was a cheap shot for Officer Morty, but the stunt let Slick in on how desperate for leads the pair was. They didn’t have shit to back up their version of events, or even the evidence to hold him on suspicion.

"We done here?" Slick’s eyes flicked to the Investigator behind a cold glare. He would have gladly gotten himself arrested to beat the living shit out of that Rick-pig, and he felt like the CSI agent knew it. The professional version of his grandfather betrayed a pained smile, looking regretful at the teen’s words.

"Sure kid. We can wrap things up. Thanks for coming down.”

The expression caught Slick off guard, making the teen wonder if he was really trying to help. Slick quickly shook it off, dismissing it as just another act. The agent pulled a high-tech holo calling card from his suit pocket and extended it across the table to Slick, who didn't even hesitate to refuse it. It was well known CSI cards had location trackers. He was a Morty, but even he wasn’t _that_ stupid.

“You’re smart, kid—waste of a Morty if you ask me.”

“Well, I didn’t.”

Rick pocketed the card and instead, scribbled his phone number onto a piece of paper. He slid the new offer across the table and Slick stared at the gesture with continued uncertainty. He spit out the mangled toothpick between his lips, and reached for his pack of cigarettes under the roll of his sleeve. He really needed a smoke.

“I’ll send my report to Morty Insurance, and we’ll do our best to get you out of storage and back into the academy as soon as we can."

“I-I don’t want another Rick.” Slick’s eyes widened in panic at the words before bleeding into a glare as he pressed a cigarette between his lips. “I’m not going back to that fucking Morty brainwashing camp!”

“Your original Rick’s policy stipulates rehoming you through the—.”

"— What about what I want!?"

The agent shrugged, unable to help. He was already preparing for his next appointment. "That’s Beuacricksy for you. Why don’t you give me a call? We might be able to talk more about it.”

Slick eyed the nickname scrawled across the piece of paper. _Fox Sanchez? What a stupid name to give to yourself._

Slick scoffed, packing the box of cigarettes against the palm of his hand before opening it to study the phrases inside. With an unsteady hand, Slick had written a short breath of affirmation on each, and today, one, in particular, stood out above the rest. He flicked his lighter open with a sharp click and drew his hands toward his face, slipping the words into his mouth.

 _Never Knows Best_.

“If I can be real with you for a second, Slick, this whole _Mortysona_ of yours...” Agent Rick made eye contact with the teen, staring as if he were looking through him. Slick’s movements fell still and he let the cigarette hang from his lips.

“...It doesn't make you look any older.” The agent non-confrontationally offered his observation of the teen, “If anything, it makes you more of a Rick."

"Well, he’s the smartest man in the multiverse." Slick quipped, and the agent's expression shifted into something more bitter and honest.

"—Yeah. Who never learned how to grow up.”

Slick said nothing in return. Instead, his fingers cradled the flame as he sucked in a deep stabilizing breath. The agent shut down his holo interface and rose from the table. He offered Slick his hand.

“I’ll walk you out,” The agent smiled.

Slick refused it, but shoved the phone number into his pocket as he left.

***

#### 

Even after 5 Ricks, they thought a Morty was still capable of being reeducated.

Foul play hadn’t been entirely ruled out of his case, courtesy of the Citadel Police Report, but Slick was no longer considered a Morty of interest. There wasn’t enough evidence to rule his Rick’s death as anything other than Rick-Recklessness, and from there, the case was fully handed over to the CSI who classified it.

Slick Morty C-013 was cleared to return to the Morty Academy, and the daycare shuffled him out the next morning eager to open up more room.

_"Good idea, Rick."_

This was the fifth time he’d come into the school year with more real-universe experience than the majority of his class, but despite having graduated from the academy enough times that he could recite every lesson, Slick was surrounded by the constant feeling of having been “held back”.

He slouched deeper into his desk gazing with an uninterested expression toward the front of the classroom. A large educational poster of Morty’s head hung next to the chalkboard, depicting the teen’s perpetual cyclical movement through the Citadel system with a bright green arrow. It folded around the teen’s blank stare.

“Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” were written underneath.

Most Mortys weren’t sent to the Academy because their Rick had gotten himself killed. Instead, they had been placed into the academy through some Citadel relocation program. Many of them were genuinely excited to land a Rick after graduation, but they all seemed to think they were gonna be the same type of Morty forever. Most of them had no idea what the multiverse had in store for them. How fucked up it could get.

He unintentionally listened to their lazy daydreams about “after graduation”, watching the way their faces lit up when they talked about their future and the infinite possibilities still in it—certain that their future was going to be the best possible one in an infinite.

Being a Morty was never actually safe. It just felt that way. Until they graduated anyways. They didn’t get to choose the Ricks in their life.

Slick missed being able to believe in stupid shit like that; not really sure when he’d lost it. Even after five Ricks, everything in the Citadel kept spinning, and Slick eventually realized that nothing he had done was ever as important as he once believed it to be.

After that realization, he found it hard to muster up the motivation to work hard toward another meaningless graduation from the academy.

Toward anything, really.

Ricks told Mortys that the multiverse was endlessly expanding. That anything was possible, but something had broken after the first Rick, and had stayed broken through the fifth. Slick never had the balls to tell his classmates the truth: that the future _was_ full of possibilities, but once they moved forward, they wouldn't ever be able to go back.

Even on the Citadel, time kept spinning.

_"This is a great adventure!"_

Slick didn’t even know what “an adventure” was anymore. After his grandpa, it felt like every Rick he’d sidekicked with was its own adventure The first Smith family he’d been relocated to had been okay, except that Slick had to pretend to _be_ the Morty of that dimension (Rick had accidentally gotten his grandson killed, and was trying to cover his own ass. Then got himself killed, and paid to send Slick back to the Citadel to cover his own ass again).

With the third Rick, he was nicknamed “Adventure Morty” because that dimension’s “Boring Morty” had the nutsack to tell his regularly manic grandfather to fuck off. When Slick’s presence didn’t incite the jealousy Rick had hoped for, he spiraled, eventually flying his spaceship into the sun. Boring Morty, who wanted a normal life was sad, but unmistakably relieved.

Rick number four was a Citadel Rick obsessed with Pocket Mortys. He’d taken Slick to the Morty Labs to get a stupid experimental “limited edition” implant, but eventually, got involved with illegal fight clubs. That ended about as well as everything else in Mortytown. Morty insurance wasn’t cheap for a Pocket Morty. Rick had been banking on Slick eventually getting killed in a fight. Slick thanked him for the vote of confidence.

His most recent Rick—Slick really bought into all the academy’s brainwashing bullshit. He thought maybe he’d found his “Forever Rick.” until “one hundred years” ended before it even really had a chance to begin. Rick wanted to take Slick on adventures. He wanted to share with Slick his knowledge of how everything in the universe worked. He wanted to give Slick a future after his death, and he did.

After Z-9, Slick was sent back to the Citadel. Back to the academy.

Reduced.

Reused.

Recycled.

If only everything in the Citadel could stop spinning.

It was a nice wish, but it was one so stupid that only a Morty would be dumb enough to wish for it. He was a Morty and nothing about his existence was ever going to change that fact.

Suddenly pissed off and with nothing left to lose, Slick leaned forward in his desk, claiming a small piece of identity that he could call his own. He couldn’t stop the Citadel from spinning, but at least he could interrupt the status quo. Throw a wrench in it from time to time. If this place was going to treat him like recyclable garbage, the least he could do was act like it.

_"I love being your new… Farty!"_

The academy classroom erupted into laughter and Slick felt a smug smile spreading across his face. Fuck the Ricksteym.

"Very amusing, Mr. Smith.” Unimpressed at Slick’s theatrics, Professor Rickman approached the teen's desk with a glare. “Almost as amusing as when your first Rick was decapitated on Zorpantheon Nine.”

Rick maintained judgemental eye contact with Slick as he announced his failures to the entire class. He leaned into the teen’s space, towering over him, “Or was that your third Rick?"

Professor Rickman lifted his lip in disgust, baring his teeth as he sneered, "How many Ricks _have_ you had?"

Slick sank into his chair with an apprehensive swallow. Professor Rickman already _knew_ the answer to that question. He just wanted Slick’s own voice to spell it out.

"Five." Slick’s expression fell, and he stared at the hard surface of his desk, studying the wood grain patterns as the figure of authority continued to make an example out of him.

"I see." Professor Rickman responded with an air of unapologetic callousness, "So you _are_ top of the class in _something_."

Professor Rickman could teach Morty’s how to help their Rick’s bottle stars, brew love potions, and even slow time—but only if they _weren’t the same bunch of dumb Mortys he was usually stuck with_. He’d never liked Slick, who according to the professor, _considered himself above Citadel rules_.

A sense of uneasiness stirred in his stomach. Slick was never meant to be a sidekick. He was never special or important. At least, that was one thing they could both agree on. His cheeks burned in shame as he clenched his hands into useless fists beneath the desk.

Professor Rickman silently warned Slick not to interrupt his class in the future. The Morty Academy wouldn't expel him (he’d tried, and failed, to earn that status in his last cohort), but there were punishments way worse than expulsion. Professor Rickman would make sure of that.

"Tomorrow you’ll all be transferred to your new Ricks." He gazed at Slick with barely concealed loathing before using his next statement to speak directly to him.

"Hopefully they will be your last."

Slick held his professor's gaze with anger turning in his chest, but broke away his eye-contact first, slouching into defeated submission. Often and loudly, Professor Rickman speculated that the Slick’s point on the Central Finite Curve had placed him on a trajectory of _unfortunate, inevitable, fuck-ups_.

So far, his hypothesis wasn’t exactly wrong, but it had been just as naive of Slick to believe that Professor Rickman was ever a Rick to look up to: just because the CFC had assigned a Rick or a Morty to work as an authority figure on the Citadel, didn’t mean they were inherently good, or that their opinions were better than his. Slick sighed, mentally adding another archetypal figure of the Citadel to the growing list of citizens he’d be better off avoiding.

The class bell rang out, interrupting Slick’s agitated mood, and he lifted his head to watch the versions of himself file through the door towards their future. Still buzzing with excitement, they laughed and joked among each other believing the small world of the Morty Academy classroom had prepared them for what was next.

He spun his gaze back into the classroom, preparing himself for another round of detention, surprised to discover that in a gesture of solidarity, his new “friends” had volunteered to stay behind with him.

Professor Ricks and Mortys alike called the trio “The Loser’s Club”, and it didn’t take a tall Morty to figure out why. Slick shifted uncomfortably as “The Fat Morty”, “The Ugly Morty”, and “The Creepy Morty” welcomed him as their newest member.

They were all desk-wetters who didn’t even know the first or last thing about Slick. He frowned, wondering what the point of even making friends was. They were never going to see each other after graduation.

Guess that made him “The Melodramatic Morty”.

“Guess we won’t be seeing’ each other after this, huh?” Lizard Morty glanced around the small group as the slits of his eyes widened and narrowed in focus. It sounded lighthearted, but the subject was heavy, and neither of the Mortys knew how to talk about it.

The Mortys in The Loser’s Club all had lost their Ricks, and unlike the rest of their graduating class, they were reluctant to graduate. The world they knew within the walls of the academy was safer than the unknown space they were about to be launched into, and the thought aggravated Slick all over again as he stared at the recycle poster, wishing that just once, they could take control of their lives. That they could break the vicious cycle they were caught within.

“I say we make our last day count!” He turned to his classmates, rallying them to his cause as he thought of a solution, “I say we go to the Wishing Portal!”

“—That’s a Myth!" Specs challenged. The wishing portal didn’t exist in real life. Not for Mortys anyways. It was just some story Mortys told to each other in the same way they collectively imagined Boobworld.

“—It’s not a myth!” Fat-Morty interjected, defending Slick, but nearly proving his point, “M-m-my first Rick’s fourth Morty knew a Rick whose Morty went there!”

Fat Morty reminded Slick of a Jerry without the insecurity. He was spineless. A natural follower, who was always excited about the _little Morty things_ that life had to offer. He could find the best in the worst situation and believe in the best of the worst people. Even though he was easily overcome with his own emotions, nothing ever seemed to really bring him down. Not in the same way that things brought Slick down, anyways. The truth was he envied Fat Morty.

“If we’re not here for graduation, our butts are gonna end up in Mortytown!” Lizard Morty was always anxious about doing everything he could to fit in, and Slick didn’t understand why he wanted to belong to Citadel Society. He rolled his eyes at the iguana’s predictable protest. Mortytown seemed a lot better than some of the Ricks he’d ended up with.

“I thought your last Rick fused you with a lizard, not a chicken!” He goaded.

Maybe if Slick got enough of them to believe in his stupid wish, it would be enough to make it a reality, “If we find the wishing portal. Everything could be different. There wouldn’t _be_ a Mortytown.”

He shared glances with each of the Mortys.

“What do you guys say?” Slick rallied, “one last adventure before we graduate!”

Some small part of him wanted to believe in it. That things could change. That they could be different. That he wasn't just a Morty.

Only a Morty could believe such bullshit.

The club threw their appendages together in solidarity.

***

#### 

"NoThInG GoLD CaN StAy, PoNyBoY!"

Slick mockingly belched out an impression of the garbage worker who thought he knew everything. The Garbage Rick had probably never even gotten out of this shithole, so what the hell did he know about how hard things were for Mortys on the Citadel?

"—That your best impression of me, _Ponyboy_?” Ahead of him, Rick snorted and continued to laugh in amusement as the teen struggled to keep his balance on the uneven surface of trash.

"How many times do I gotta tell you, my name's not Ponyboy!" Slick groaned in frustration, and tilted his peripheral gaze in the general direction of Rick’s orange jacket, before quickly returning them to his feet, "It's Slick!"

"Thought you said you had some kind of a drama implant?" Rick teased, still laughing at the teen’s impression of him.

"—Fuck off!" Slick swore as he stumbled over another uneven piece of trash and barely caught himself from taking another fall. He held out a hand, placing his weight against a giant slab of concrete to find his footing. Everything felt like it was moving around him, and the disorienting sensation reminded Sick of being in Rick’s spaceship, and he reminded himself that the Citadel was just a bigger Rick spaceship. The ground bobbed and swayed with constant subtle movements, and occasionally, it shook with a vibrating patch of turbulence.

Slick’s whole body felt disoriented, and his legs wobbled like jelly with each step. It was beginning to make him feel sick, but Slick resisted the urge to crawl. He'd take another fall before letting that asshole see that he was too dumb to even walk right.

His eyes strained to find a way through the shapes and colors of garbage as he willed his body through the chaotic mess. Slightly dizzy, Slick cast his gaze upward to search for the always present stars, but instead, could only see the large shape of the portal distantly spinning above them. A steady stream of garbage fell through its ominous shape, and the continuous landslide spilled into the mountainous landscape below.

Everything Ricks and Mortys had loved. Until they didn't.

The putrid smell rose with the heat of the artificial day, knocking the wind out of Slick's already winded lungs. With each step, he felt the sharp weight of his grandfather’s dog tags jostle against his chest as he strained to match the taller man's pace. The gap between them seemed to be widening by the second, and Rick teased him for being so out of breath.

"Practicing to play that harmonica you found?"

Slick’s grip tightened around the harmonica still in his hand. He didn't even have the extra breath to reply to Rick. Instead he cursed to himself. He’d cut back to one a day, but maybe it _was_ time to quit smoking entirely.

The hard metallic edges of the harmonica bit into Slick’s hand as he pushed himself up onto a ledge. Carrying the object had made it harder for the teen to move through the garbage, but Slick had been too afraid of losing it to store it in his skin-tight jeans pocket.

"You want me to follow you, right?" Slick demanded, unwilling to ask nicely, "Then slow down!"

"Stop calling me an _old man_ , and I might!” Rick’s laughter cut short as he took in the teen’s paling face. His expression grew serious and he began to retrace his steps.

“What even—is this place.” Slick pressed his free hand to his forehead, stopping just short of messing up his greaser-pomade lock of hair. “It’s making me feel...weird.”

“Shit, kid. You ever been time-sick?”

“Time sick?” Slick heaved, resisting the urge to hurl. Or faint. He hoped he wasn’t about to do both.

“Yeah, the space-time ‘round here, it’s uh," Rick stopped walking to search for the right words, "It fluctuates. We’re heading closer to the Citadel’s axis. So naturally, the gravitational shifts are gonna be a bit more intense. Time’s relative to gravity ‘n’ all that, and because we inhabit time your body’s gonna adjust with it. Feels like four-dimensional motion sickness.”

“Ugh. Shut up!” Rick’s explanation was only making Slick’s head spin more. “I don’t care _how_ I’m getting sick. Just. You’re a Rick! Tell me how to fix it!”

“You can't.” Rick shrugged glancing over his shoulder at the teen with an apologetic expression, “I remember hearing it hits Mortys worse than Ricks. It’s the reason there aren’t a lot of you kids working down here.”

Rick looked thoughtful for a moment, before stretching out his arms toward Slick. “I mean. I know it’s fucking huge, but wearing my jacket might help.”

“—I don’t wanna wear your stupid smelly orange jacket!” Slick lowered himself into a squat, waiting for the sense of disorientation to calm. It was worse when he was moving. “Ugh. This is bullshit! Why is the Citadel so bent on making Mortys lives hell?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure It’s got nothing to do with _you_ ,” Rick frowned, looking annoyed and slightly disappointed, “This place is designed to expand the least amount of energy possible ‘cause it’s working ‘round the extended clock to manage the Citadel systems. Besides, It’s not time’s fault that you’re getting sick. It’s your _perception_ of it.”

“You’re trying to say this is my fault?” Slick swallowed the rising bile in his throat. If he was gonna hurl, he was going to be sure to barf on the Garbage Rick.

“What!? No? Jeezus, I’m saying you’re _just a kid_...time _feels_ like it’s moving slower for you—but that’s just because the amount of time you’ve experienced is less. When you get older, time feels like it’s moving faster, but only ‘cause you’ve experienced more of it. It’s all relative entropy. Down here, a Morty’s gonna feel the time-space fluctuations way more than a Rick.”

"So. This shit doesn't affect you because you're old as balls?"

Rick laughed, "Pretty much. It doesn't even feel like time’s even moving for me anymore."

“Really?” Morty’s eyes narrowed at the older man, as he considered their different experiences of time and reality.

“Well, except when I’m staring at The Green Sun. Still makes me feel sick if I stare at it too long.”

Just a few days ago in the academy, Slick had been daydreaming about being able to stop time, but he'd never really thought about what time _felt_ like. He wasn't entirely sure why the thought of _feeling_ time stop terrified him so much more than the abstract idea of it just stopping.

“Ugh,” He dismissed the thought entirely, and brushed the feeling of existential dread out of his mind. “I’m never getting as old as you.”

“Heh, just you wait." Rick teased as he patiently waited for Slick to catch up. The teen took a few determined steps forward, and Rick watched his uneven footwork with a grin. He thought aloud to himself, shaking his head in amused disbelief. “A hundred years apart ‘n’ we’re not that different.”

Slick pushed through the disoriented feeling in his body as he willed himself toward Rick thinking it would be easier if he just kept moving until this was over. It wasn’t long before he was out of breath all over again. His spit tasted like metal and his lungs burned.

“How’d you even make it out to the garbage portal in the first place?"

Slick tilted his gaze upward, returning it to the mirror-like portal spinning in the distance. He wondered how the other Mortys were doing, and selfishly hoped they made it back in time for graduation. He hoped that he didn’t mess up their lives alongside his.

"We followed the hyperloop tracks."

“Wait— _’We’?_ You’re sayin' you've got a friend who might be up there somewhere _looking for you_ right now?"

Slick clenched the harmonica in his hand. It felt like it was the only thing he had left of them. He shook his head and returned his gaze to the trail of garbage at his feet.

“I don’t make friends."

***

The setting sun seemed to reflect Slick’s settling thoughts.

He lay on the mossy forest floor, feeling the gentle warmth of the crackling fire next to him as it mixed with the soft hum of the cooling night air. Beside him, Specs played his harmonica into the encroaching darkness.

At first, Slick didn’t like the way the weird instrument sounded—like a broken church organ that was being played by a Morty—but after a few beats, slowly but surely, a discernible chord progression began to emerge.

Slick listened to the hallowed sound and gazed up at the stars as if the glass dome of the Citadel never existed, and time gradually slowed with the disappearing sun, until their entire universe was contained within a timeless moment. The bright sound of the harmonica rang out into the endless night sky. It felt almost sacred.

Left-handed Morty had lifted his yellow shirt, and bit down on the hem. He grinned, patting out a base beat over his stomach to accompany Specs’ song.

Lizard Morty tasted the air and scurried closer to join in. The reptile hissed out a rhythmic sound, raking a branch across the molting scales on his tail. Slick felt his head begin to sway to the rounded out sound of music that was suddenly surrounding him.

He watched them for a few moments, unsure of what to do. Uncertain if he was welcome until cautiously, he removed the dog tags from his neck, and wrapped them once around his fist. He held them out in front of him and, not entirely sure what he was doing, gave it a cautious shake. The metal pieces clinked together in a way that almost sounded like _something_.

Encouraged, he shook his hand once more, doing his best to time his movements to the array of sounds the other Mortys were making. Specs flashed Slick a smile, before restarting the song. For a moment, the four were perfectly synchronized with each other, but it wasn’t long before their individual sounds separated into an uncoordinated mess between them.

It didn’t matter by then, because the effort had sent them into a chorus of uncontrollable laughter. Left-handed Morty had laughed (or drummed on his stomach) so hard that tears had formed in the corners of his eyes. He brushed them away with the palm of his hand and with a beaming smile took the first deep breath that had followed his bout of laughter.

“This is a great adventure!”

Maybe it was because he was too dumb to know better, but Left-handed Morty was the only one able to express what was going through their collective minds.

With barely concealed smiles of disobedience, the group of boys exchanged furtive glances with each other. Adventures weren’t supposed to be had without Ricks, and if it wasn’t for their silent pact, made with each other in that moment, Slick would have been fearful of what it meant.

But the moment felt impenetrable, and within it, Slick realized he wasn’t afraid. Of the future, or anything else that existed outside of the now. The glass dome of the Citadel of Ricks could come crashing down over them, and it wouldn’t have changed the way he had felt. Right here. Right now—laughing on the best adventure he’d ever had with his new friends.

 _This is what an adventure is supposed to be._ He thought to himself in agreement. He closed his eyes wanting it to last forever. A warm silence settled over them as Slick listened to the crackle of the fire and the music of cricket’s chirping around them. Until Left-handed Morty spoke again.

“H-Hey. Guys?” His fearful voice interrupted the brief silence. Morty had suddenly grown aware of the darkness that had fallen over their small campsite, “D-do you guys think the Faire Rick of the forest is real?”

“The _Faire Rick_?” Slick didn’t even attempt to hide his smirk, curious to how the Morty even made the leap to that thought, “Pfft, what’s that?”

“You know! The Rick who whisks Mortys away from the Citadel!” Left-handed Morty’s eyes widened as he whispered, afraid to invoke the character of his overactive imagination. Slick tilted his gaze to Specs, who was wiping down his harmonica with the same kerchief he used to clean his glasses. The glasses-wearing Morty had quickly become the storyteller of their group, and he caught Slick’s double-daring gaze with a conspiratorial grin of his own. He lowered his voice to set the scene.

“Well, _ahem_.” Specs cleared his throat, “Legend has it that there is a lonely Rick who lives deep in the Citadel forest.” Specs shared gazes with each of his counterparts as they leaned closer, “They call him the Faire Rick— Y’know, because he’s cursed—made of flowers and grass and trees and stuff…” Specs trailed before clearing his throat again and returning to the previous dramatic storytelling voice.

“Because of the curse, Faire Rick can never leave. Instead, he whispers a song of Morty madness into the wind—one only Mortys who are as lonely as he can hear.”

Slick’s smile widened. He loved hearing Specs share his stories. It was strangely comforting to know that he wasn’t the _only_ Morty with a dramatic streak. The color of fire glowed against the surface of his glasses as the urgency in Specs voice climbed.

“He calls to them,” Specs warned with a hushed voice, “He lures them into the forest depths, promising them eternity. And when a Morty dares to follow the song into his arms?” Specs lifted his hands into the air, eliciting a frightened gasp from Left-handed Morty. “HE FEEDS ON THEIR BLOOD!”

Specs lowered his voice and pointed to the darkness beyond. He ended the tale on a final solemn note.

“He adds their bodies to his. On the growing. Forest. Floor.”

Slick caught the paling face of Left-handed Morty who, with the retelling of the story, looked absolutely terrified. Slick couldn’t help himself, and laughed at his counterpart's sincere expression, before turning toward Specs to challenge the validity of his story. They didn’t need Left-Handed Morty to piss his pants again.

“Bullshit!” He tossed a piece of moss at their storyteller, “There’s _no way_ that’s real!”

“Y-You don’t have any proof that it isn’t,” Lizard Morty distractedly interjected. He’d flattened himself into the ground and his eyes were wildly darting around, searching for an insect that had been unfortunate enough to wander into the light of their campfire. His tongue suddenly shot out, snatching it from out of thin air. He chewed it with a distinct crunch, and gleefully swallowed, before turning his attention back to his friends.

“But don’t worry, Fat Morty. I don’t see any weird colors or smell anything dangerous out here.”

“Aw Jeez,” Left-handed Morty nodded in relief, fully trusting the inhuman instincts of his reptilian friend, “Thanks Thin Lizzie.”

“Don’t even trip, man!”

Still smiling, Slick returned his gaze to the sky. It had been nice to see Lizard Morty become more comfortable in his skin. They all had. This adventure wasn’t something Slick realized that he’d needed, but now that he had it, he felt the moment already moving forward. He caught a momentary reflection of light against the glass dome and contemplated the dark emotions stirring in the void beyond. He frowned and chewed his lip.

He hadn’t planned to make friends.

He hadn’t wanted to go on any more adventures.

“I bet the Wishing Portal leads to a reality where they’re—where all— wh-where it’s a bunch of french toast with boobies!” Left-Handed Morty shared his wildest daydreams about the wishing portal with his friends.

Slick held his tongue, not wanting to ruin the moment. Mortys could be so blindly optimistic—so empty-headed that they didn’t have a single worry in the universe. Lizard Morty took a turn, expanding on Left-handed Morty’s thoughts.

“I bet it leads to a place with a bunch of flies, flying everywhere!”

Slick rolled his eyes as his thoughts drifted back to the dark emotion that had led him here. The reality Slick had convinced them all to run away from, suddenly caught up to him, invading their moment. They weren’t going anywhere, and their adventure hadn’t really solved anything.

None of this mattered.

Since he’d started this stupid adventure, some part of Slick was trying to do things the way The Losers Club did them. Deep down, he wanted to be part of it. Whatever _it_ was. The group of Mortys shared whatever was on their minds with each other. They were never afraid to laugh or cry or sing in front of each other—about anything.

They saw the loser in each other and accepted it. At times, they even celebrated it. But Slick couldn’t even be a loser. He didn’t know any other way to be than the way he had always been. He tried to do it their way, but he couldn’t. His emotions always got in the way. It’s what had always happened ever since he got the dumb implant.

“Yeah,” He glared into the empty night sky, his own eyes growing dark, “I bet it goes nowhere.”

Adventures always ended.

That was what made _going on them_ feel so important.

Slick couldn’t just say what was really going on inside his head. The rest of the Mortys probably wouldn’t even be able to understand him if he could. The Melodramatic teen didn’t want to ruin their adventure, but he could feel the muscles in his throat tightening. He didn’t want to let the other Mortys see him cry.

It was the most important things that were always the hardest for him to say.

He’d rather ruin it himself, than watch the universe take something else from him. He folded his arms and sulked.

“I bet it’s a big black hole where the Citadel dumps all its broken dreams.”

“Slick.” After an awkward, shocked silence, Left-handed Morty was the first to speak his dumb mind. “Why do you have to be so dramatic?”

Because it was Left-handed Morty, the question wasn’t judgemental or accusing. He wasn’t intending to hurt Slick’s feelings. It was as earnest as it was sincere, and it cut deeper because of it. If it had been any other Morty, Slick could have justified his sense of righteous anger, but instead Slick rose to his feet, reaching for the hem of his shirt.

“You wanna know why?” He glared at Left-handed Morty, and dared him to see the truth of what had been done to him, “Because of this!”

Everything he did was an act. They’d gone on an adventure and Slick hadn’t even been able to show them who he really was. “I’m part of an experimental line of Mortys with a drama implant!”

He repeated the words his fourth Rick had instructed him to say, and Left-handed Morty looked up at him with a blank stare. He didn’t get it. No one did.

“How do you think it feels, Fat Morty.”

Across from him, on the other side of the fire Specs rose to his feet with a worried expression. Slick couldn’t look at him. He couldn’t look at any of them. Without any anger left in him, he turned his back to them, forcing back the girly tears that were threatening to spill.

“No matter where I go in life, I’ll always be the one that makes everybody sad and a little bored.”

Slick felt the weight of his own body crumble beneath him, and he fell to the ground. Pulling his knees to his chest, he tucked his face into himself. He was nothing more than an inevitable fuck up, destined to ruin everything he cared about.

A hand lightly fell against his bare shoulder. Specs had approached him, and offered a reassuring squeeze.

“Slick, that implant isn’t who you are, okay?” Slick lifted his blurry gaze to Specs, who pulled him into a hug, “You also roll up your sleeves.”

Self-acceptance was the only thing Specs had to give, but somehow, in that moment it was enough. Slick desperately clung to his interdimensional counterpart, unable to remember the last time he’d been given a hug as if he mattered. In a universe that didn’t give a fuck about them, they mattered to each other and that was enough.

Specs tucked Slick’s head away from his four prying eyes, and beneath the protection of the Morty’s arms Slick silently sobbed. He listened to the other Mortys distant conversation about vegetables, thankful they’d already moved on from his stupid drama.

Specs wasn’t like the other two members of The Losers Club. He understood what Slick was going through. How real this overwhelming emotion was. If Specs felt the boy’s tears warming the surface of his shirt, he didn’t mention it, because he knew Slick didn’t want him to. He clung to his friend, even more, not knowing if he’d be hugged like this again.

Slick’s tears slowly dried, and Specs spoke to him in a quiet voice as his hand trailed through the teen’s hair.

“You don’t have to act like that, Y’know? Not with us, anyways.”

For a moment, Slick had shown them who he really was, and it was the first time he’d ever felt that version of him had been accepted. It was the first time he felt that he had found a sense of identity beyond the labels and expectations of himself and of other Ricks. He nodded, regaining his composure before carefully pulling himself away from Specs’ embrace. He offered a vulnerable smile and awkwardly sniffed.

“Everything will be fine in the end,” Left-handed Morty optimistically shared his thoughts. He hadn’t realized everyone was pretending that they hadn’t seen Slick cry, “If it isn’t, then it’s not the end yet!”

It wasn’t really the kind of advice that would have worked for Slick, but because it was Left-handed Morty who gave it, it did make him feel a little better. A little more hopeful. Maybe Morty wishes did come true.

“Thanks, Left-handed Morty.” Slick sniffed again, wiping his nose on his sleeve. No one in the group really understood why he’d chosen it, but the least Slick could do was respect the name the Morty had given himself. Left-handed Morty’s face lit up at the acknowledgment, and suddenly flustered at the respect, he hid his face inside of his yellow shirt and mumbled through the fabric that it was time for him to go to bed.

Slick laughed, glad to even the score, and reached for his smokes. The fire was beginning to die out, and the stars seemed to burn even brighter overhead. Slick stared at them through the glass dome, feeling insignificant under their raw silence.

"I think maybe... I just grew up on the wrong side of the multiverse," Slick admitted to Specs, apologizing for his actions and trying to explain them at the same time. He was angry. He was always angry. But he hadn’t been looking for a fight. He’d always just been looking to belong.

“We're Mortys. Welcome to the club.”

Specs laughed, accepting everything Slick was trying and failing to say. The group of losers had claimed him, even if he’d never wanted them too. Slick was still torn about how he wanted to feel about that because it meant at some point, all of this was going to end. It always did, and he’d be back to where he started.

At some point the Mortys had left on the first and last adventure they’d ever have together, and every moment since had felt like a beginning and an end for Slick.

It wasn’t fair

***

The mountains of garbage had slowly flattened out, and the pair navigated their way through a field of sinkholes. Garbage Rick had said something about them traveling close to the heart of the Citadel, and now that Slick was wallowing in his own garbage thoughts, Slick glanced around the ugly mess, unable to help the feeling that he was looking at the landscape of his own heart.

To protect whatever had been so important, a bunch of junk had been piled on top of his heart, at least, until the layers and layers of garbage eventually buried it altogether. Rick’s angry voice interrupted his pity party.

"—Thought I lost you down some sinkhole. What gives?"

Slick watched the older man retrace his steps to where the teen had given up and began to bury himself in the piles of trash.

“Just. Fuck off, okay. Leave me alone!”

Slick had only meant to take a short break, but once he'd settled into the surrounding garbage he didn't have the energy to even pull himself back up. Who cared if Rick was angry at him. It wasn’t like the garbage worker actually gave a shit about him. He was probably like every other Rick in the Citadel who was just trying to get a paycheck out of the Morty.

"I'm not your friend you—you—" Slick gave up. He didn’t even have the strength to finish his insult. He dramatically fell into the garbage and waited for the wasteland to swallow him.

"Where’d that even _come from?_ I never said we were!" Rick exasperated before leaning over the teen, hand on hips. "Seriously, what the fuck’s your damage?"

Slick folded his arms, groaning into the effort of having to finish his earlier thought. "Look. I didn't come all this way for some old Rick to tell me what to do! Y’know what!? Y-you’re nothing but a sad old fart!"

"Oh, sorry. What was that?" Rick feigned concern as he stuck a gloved middle finger into his ear, "Sorry, kid, I'm just _so damn old!_ My hearing aid doesn't work like it used to. You want me to saddle a fart?"

"No, I said—" With a huff Rick picked up the teen, tossing him over his other shoulder as he continued to effortlessly walk. Slick squirmed, trying to push himself away from the Garbage Worker’s shoulder. His jacket smelled like rank ass, and Slick was even more thankful that he hadn’t agreed to wear it earlier.

“Wh-what are you doing—”

“—The foundation isn't solid in this sector,” Rick’s voice sounded stressed as he lectured the teen, “Fuck. Y-you can't just stop moving like that!"

Slick felt like he needed to apologize, but instead he struggled to free himself from Rick’s arm. Like hell he’d apologize.

“I—I can walk!”

"Yeah, apparently. You can't."

Slick continued to thrash around at the humiliating gesture of _needing_ to be carried. He could handle himself. He didn't need some Rick to do everything for him. _He didn't need another Rick_ and was growing angrier with every step forward Rick took with him.

“Put me down!” Slick struggled as he uselessly kicked and punched the bright padded layers of the rank oversized jacket, "I'm not going on this stupid adventure with you!"

"Look,” Rick attempted to compromise, ”I know you had a death wish like an hour ago, but _I have no intention_ of being number six on your track record—" Rick caught the words on his tongue, tensing beneath the weight of the teen's frame which immediately fell still.

Rick’s footsteps stalled and he gently lowered Slick to his feet in a retroactive silent apology. Slick quickly stepped out of Rick’s reach and with an angry scowl, lifted his free hand to fix his hair. Rick frowned at the teen’s angry expression.

"I didn't mean—"

"—Just—whatever." Slick waved a dismissive hand toward the Garbage worker, turning to march away from him.

Rick carefully stepped behind the teen. _"Whatever?"_

"Just drop it, okay? I don’t wanna—" Slick suddenly kicked a trash bag out of his way, pivoting back to Rick as he yelled, “—Why would you even say something like that!?”

Before Rick could try to explain himself, Slick cut him off, kicking another piece of garbage out of his way, “Like. I mean. Are you—You’re not even...” Slick trailed into an angry silence, and shoving his fists into his pockets. He angrily stamped his foot over a beer can, crushing it.

“...Qualified?” Rick finished the insult Slick had left unfinished.

“That’s not what I— I mean—you can barely even call this Rick-work!” Slick’s face flushed as he defensively stumbled over his words. “I mean. How smart do you have to be to pick up garbage?”

"You'd be surprised, Ponyboy.” Rick’s lighthearted laugh lifted the moment of tension, “We're a society of geniuses—it all comes down to supply and demand—a high IQ isn't as valuable on the Citadel as it was on Earth.”

"So what _is_?" Morty looked over his hunched up shoulders.

"A genius willing to pick up his own garbage." Rick grinned, then shrugged, "It’s a living. Some Ricks are willing to do this kind of work. Some Ricks would rather drop dead. Guess we all get to choose, amirite?"

The Garbage Rick was starting to piss Slick off. Rick had been just as stressed out and frustrated today, but he wasn’t even mad at Slick. He just laughed the teen’s antics off—treating Slick like he was still just a kid. Like a Morty, who didn’t even know enough to be responsible for whatever fell out of his mouth.

"Why don’t you just choose to dump it all into space?" Still upset, Slick observed, trying to prove himself to a Rick he told himself he wasn’t even trying to impress.

"Because It's garbage."

"Okay. You're so smart? Rick? Explain it to me."

“I just did.” Rick sighed but reluctantly explained, "I don’t know if you _realized_ , but we’re all living in a city-sized spaceship without the _luxury_ of being powered by a solar sun! Raw materials don't just magically shit outta the vacuum of space. They're mined. _Salvaged_. All your shit that didn’t spark joy ends up here. Where some genius— _me_ —has to sort through it.”

“Well, It still doesn't seem that hard.” Slick dismissed, unsure of why he was antagonizing the Rick, who had only been trying to help. Slick couldn’t trust any Rick until he saw them get angry. That was the only version of them he believed in.

“I bet even I could do it.”

“Heh, you think this is easy, kid?” Rick scoffed, and the irritation in his voice finally brimmed, “It’s easy to throw your life away, but getting up every morning to shovel through someone else’s shit? You don’t even know the kind of strength that takes.”

“You don’t know me!”

"Yeah? You think you’re a tough little shit. You think you’ve got this all figured out. The universe can’t take anything from you if you don’t allow yourself to have anything worth taking, amirite? Well take it from me, even _nothing’s_ gonna get ripped outta your hands in time.”

Slick stubbornly marched onward, stamping his feet with each step. He knew Garbage Rick was right, but wished that he wasn’t.

“Entropy’s a bitch.” Rick’s voice chased after him, “Everything keeps spinning, and this multiverse is gonna keep expanding—whether you decide to be part of it or not. Don’t high road me because I had the balls to stick it out.”

“Wh-whatever. This is stupid,” Slick’s ears burned in guilt and embarrassment because Rick’s words continued to ring true. “I-I don’t have to listen to you! You’re not my Rick, y’know!"

"Well, if your Rick wasn’t willing to do the damn job, then maybe I should be."

“I don’t need a Rick!” Morty declared between heavy breaths, “ _I don’t need anyone!_ I can take care of myself! Be-because on the Citadel. I’m an adult!”

“—You don't even know what the hell that word even means!"

Slick opened his mouth to speak, but didn’t have any answers left to give. Instead, he scowled at the garbage worker and snapped his jaw into a tight line before storming ahead. An awkward silence followed them until finally, Rick sighed. Looking exhausted, he reached for his flask.

“Look. Nobody knows, kid—that’s the big reveal.” Rick admitted as he took a pull of hard liquor. “We’ve all got this pretty picture of what being an adult looks like in our heads, and we all put on this act pretending to be it. But we’re all just lying to ourselves. To each other. Trying to convince the universe that we’ve _grown up_ when the reality is that we don’t even have the balls to admit that _none of us have_.”

Slick’s chest tightened, but he refused to look over his shoulder. Rick rambled on after him.

“Hell, even at 70 on the Citadel, we’re still putting on these personas thinking it’s enough to make it real, but all it ever does is make the shit that’s real that much harder to see. It’s given us a collective identity complex: we're too busy hiding who we are because we’re too busy chasing after some pretty idea of who we think we’re supposed to be.”

Slick stopped walking for a pause, unable to speak. He couldn’t believe that _a garbage worker_ had put into words something Slick hadn’t even been able to describe his own emotions around. He felt like everything he did was an act.

Being Slick was more than rolling up his sleeves and trying to be a version of himself that he believed was “cool”. He’d really only ever been putting on the act for himself— pretending that “Slick” didn’t need or want the things Morty felt he’d lost. Slick was the garbage identity that had been piled over Morty’s heart, and it was something Slick hadn’t been able to be honest with himself about—until he jumped. He opened his mouth to say something, but Rick cut him off, mentioning him by name.

"What I do know, Slick—is that you’ve got a serious sack of balls.” Rick complimented the teen and Slick finally looked over his shoulder at the older man, biting his lip to keep a somewhat stable expression.

“It takes something real to look at that portal and imagine what you really want on the other side of it. To take that leap," They shared eye contact for a moment, and the garbage worker nodded to him in a gesture of respect, "Even if...well, even if what’s on the other side turns out to be garbage. What’s on the other side doesn’t really matter in the end. Having the balls to find out though? That does."

The ground shifted into a solid metal surface, and Slick felt a sense of unease stir in his chest. He’d only ever seen others salute his grandfather, and he didn’t know how to handle the sudden acknowledgment of respect. Rick had gotten angry, but it hadn’t changed the kind of Rick he was, and for some reason, that thought intimidated Slick even more.

Slick didn’t know how to confront Rick’s honest demeanor. His honest compliment, his honest lecture, or even his honest anger. He turned away from the Rick in embarrassment, not knowing what to say, or even how to say it.

"Until I took that leap of faith?” Rick stepped ahead of Morty resting a hand on his shoulder as he passed, “The garbage was burying me alive."

***

_"Aw Jeez. It is real!"_

The concept of anything other than the vacuous emptiness of space existing beyond the Citadel was, at times, unimaginable. For many of the Mortys the small Rick-centric world—contained in a glass dome—was everything they knew. Stepping through an interdimensional portal was a right of passage.

“No turning back.”

Slick remembered the first time he nervously stood at the precipice of the swirling green vortex, imagining the worlds that existed beyond—before his gramps impatiently pushed him through it.

He’d never heard of a _wishing portal_ before he came to the Citadel, but as Slick heard the changing versions of stories about it, he quickly realized it was something that only Mortys who’d never been through a portal believed in.

An ominous instinctual fear hung over The Loser’s Club as they stood at the edge of the industrial district and stared past the large iron gates to their destination. Slick glared at Left-handed Morty for stating the obvious and wiped his own clammy hands against his jeans. He reached down to pick up a broken metal pipe.

It was alarmingly easy to pry open the cheap lock, and Slick stood, momentarily paralyzed as he considered the potential danger they were in. Slick had wanted to choose his own adventure—without having to be a sidekick for anyone, but the full weight of his actions uncomfortably settled over him. He’d led his new friends to a place that was far away from any Rick’s presence. Whatever was on the other side, The Loser’s Club was going to have to confront it on their own.

“After you.”

The iron gates swung open, and Slick tossed the lead pipe to the ground, pointing his hand toward the mythical wishing portal.

Everything he did was an act.

They trespassed into the industrial district, running through the metal structure toward the call of the distant radioactive glow. Finally, they stepped into the central chamber where the emerald colors emanated from the source. Left-handed Morty held his hand over his mouth and gasped as the others fell into a silent moment of awe.

“There it is!”

“The Wishing Portal!”

Slick was struck silent by the sheer scale of the portal. It was so large, that he could barely see the other side of it. Unlike the loud portal noises he remembered, this portal was unsettlingly quiet. The sound of a constant harmonic thrum echoed in the chamber making his hairs stand on end. Slick grabbed his arms, and folded them as he stared into the silent spinning colors of the portal that never opened or closed.

He could see why Citadel Mortys decided to call it the wishing portal.

“They say for your wish to come true,” Left-handed Morty was overcome with excitement and didn’t hesitate to make his wish. He shucked off his backpack, childishly opening the zipper, “you have to give up something really important.”

Slick hadn’t brought anything to throw into the wishing portal. He clenched his empty hands as he stared into the intoxicating green glow and counted the time he had left before he’d have to come clean.

The truth was there wasn’t anything special about this portal.

He’d lied to them.

He just wanted to see if the other Mortys were really stupid enough to believe it. He wanted to watch them throw their most important possessions into the portal, and laugh at them for it. He wanted to teach them a lesson about how the universe really worked, and he wanted to prove to them that Morties who dared to wish for anything were stupid.

He wanted to be a Rick, but that had been before he started wishing for their friendship. One by one, he watched them throw their most important possessions into the portal.

“That’s my panini maker.” Left-handed Morty closed his eyes and threw the appliance into the portal with a dumb smile on his face, “I wish for a million sandwiches. And, yes, I see the irony.”

Slick closed his eyes and wished that his friend would be assigned to a Rick who was some chef or a baker. A Rick who appreciated his simple and easygoing outlook on life. He wished it wouldn’t be some asshole who fat-shamed him.

“I guess I wish I had something cooler than this dumb-ass surfer necklace,” Lizard Morty pulled a seashell necklace from his neck, and tossed the object in with nonchalance. Lizard Morty had made that necklace with his own hands. He was proud of it until the other Mortys made fun of him for it.

Slick’s grip tightened around his own arms. He wished Lizard Morty would find a Rick who accepted his dumb Lizard-ness as much as they did. That he wouldn’t be so desperate to fit in and would find a way to be proud of who and what he was.

Slick clutched his own dog tags, and suddenly, he realized that he _did_ have an object that was important to him, but he’d never allow himself to lose the pieces of metal let alone throw them away. He cringed, wishing he’d never taken the Mortys on this prank-adventure. It wasn’t funny anymore.

Specs hesitated before courageously shuffling right up to the edge of the portal, and Slick bit his tongue and waited. Specs _knew_ it was a myth. If any of the Mortys were smart enough to call Slick out on his shit, it would be the four-eyes of the group.

Instead, Slick’s eyes widened as Specs pushed his glasses up with shaking hands before revealing his harmonica. He closed his eyes and held it over the wishing portal like an offering.

“I wish incest porn had—had a more mainstream appeal,” He nervously swallowed and his eyes flicked toward Slick, “For—For a friend of mine!”

Slick’s heart sank as he watched the piece of metal fall from Specs’ fingertips. It glistened as it tumbled into the depths of the wishing portal. Gone forever. Just like the moment Specs had shared with them.

Specs was honest with himself in a way that Slick had never allowed himself to be. He was honest and kind and accepting. Completely at ease with the multiverse and his place in it. He’d started The Loser’s Club because he didn’t need to be cool. He didn’t need to be tough, or even smart—all he ever needed was the balls to be himself. At the mouth of the wishing portal, Slick watched the Morty boldly speak his wish despite knowing the truth of it, and beside him Slick felt indescribably small.

“None of those things are gonna happen, you know.” Slick’s thoughts burst from his mouth as he bit back his swirling emotions, “Morty wishes never come true. Not on the Citadel.”

It was his turn. Slick stepped up to the precipice just as Specs had done, and stared into the vertigo-inducing portal spinning below. He clutched the dog tags against his chest, not knowing how to let them go. Not knowing how to wish for anything less or more than what the multiverse had already given him.

“Then why did you bring us here?” Left-handed Morty didn’t get it, and Slick didn’t know that he ever would. Soon, this adventure would be over and Slick would be handed back over to the Citadel authorities. He had no choice but to go back to whatever future Ricks decided to give to him.”

“Because I wish that would change!” Slick wished aloud as he felt tears spilling over his cheeks. It was the first honest wish he’d ever made in his life, but he knew better than anyone. Just wishing for change didn’t create it. “I wish anything about this life would change!”

Slick was a Morty, no matter how much he wished otherwise.

He stared over the edge, into the calm spinning colors of the wishing portal and wished that just for a moment, everything could stop spinning.

“Well, I hope you’re putting something pretty God-damn important in there.”

Slick felt his tears spill over himself; into the portal as he gave himself permission to make a desperate helpless wish. The strange sense of vertigo swallowed him, and for a moment, he felt weightless.

“Me too. But I doubt it.”

***

#### 

“Oh, shit! You hear this? _You listening to this!?_ I-I-It's my baby girl!—I-In one of the dimensions, anyways. She sounds great, right! The band’s even named after her! I have all of her cassettes and a limited edition t-shirt!”

Rick excitedly rambled on to Slick, bobbing his head as he danced along to the sounds of his pocket radio-walkman. He tossed his head through the air and pumped his fist into the beats of the chorus as they trekked deeper into the metallic structure.

Slick fought down the rising laugh that was determined to betray him. He didn’t trust himself to participate in Rick’s suddenly upbeat mood, so instead, he shoved his hands in his pockets, sulking to himself as they worked their way through the thickening maze of industrial pipes.

His eyes cautiously traced the network of metal lines as they traveled like overgrown mechanical vines into the tunnel ahead of them. Rick casually danced into the circular black mouth of the tunnel and Slick hesitated before stepping over the threshold with a nervous swallow. He patted his back pockets with a frown, remembering that he’d lost his pack of smokes.

“You smoke?”

“Not a chance, kid. Hazardous waste contaminants everywhere down here. Because someone— _not gonna name any names, but I think we all know two—_ decided that biologically hazardous materials like plumbuses or isotope 465 could just be thrown in with the regular garbage.”

Rick’s dancing shifted into regular jovial footwork as their path narrowed into a thin metal grate, enclosed within two high railings. Most of the industrial pipes were metal, installed so long ago that their original gold color looked like it had deteriorated. Mold-like blooms of green bubbled in corrosive patterns along the length of the metal. The amount of verdigris texture signaled the age of each particular section of pipes.

The newer ones were made of the same golden metal as the buildings he’d seen in the tourist district. Glowing from the inside with the familiar teal blue color of Citadel Tech, thin windowpanes ran along their length, and Slick peered into them to recognize the floating pieces of garbage as they were transported.

Rick patted his jacket glancing over his shoulder at the teen. “You drink?” he offered, reaching for his own flask, and Slick quickly shook his head in refusal. Mortys were the unwittingly complicit casualties in a Citadel designed to run on alcohol. He shrugged.

"Straight Edge.” Slick didn’t even know how to explain Mortytown to the garbage worker who (he had assumed) had never been, "It's like the time sickness, I guess. TripleX affects Mortys differently than it does Ricks."

Angry and violent toward the Ricks who’d failed them, and trapped in a system designed to oppress them even further—alcohol had a track record for turning Mortys into a terrifyingly different person.

“Yeesh,” Rick acknowledged the implications, “A society full of geniuses. You’d think after a few generations of alcoholism we’d’ve come up with something better than abstinence.”

“Yeah, but we’re taught that high-functioning alcoholism is a sign of a healthy Citadel society.” Slick quoted the lesson from the Morty Academy with barely concealed bitter sarcasm.

“Damn,” Rick pursed his lips, only able to agree with Slick’s observation. “The shit we’ve normalized in here, amirite?”

“Yeah,” Slick corrected him, “The shit we’ve learned to take from Grandpa Rick.”

Rick was silent for a moment, before he let out an honest sigh, “No wonder you’re so damn angry all the time.”

Slick’s anger had never been acknowledged as something valid. Especially not from a Rick. Thankful the garbage worker had walked ahead of him, and Slick felt his ears burn.

“Hey, Listen.” Rick began without warning and he gripped the railing for support, “What I said earlier...about your Gramps. Sorry. I uh...I didn’t have to say it like that.”

“Don’t be.” Slick didn’t like the emotional direction of their conversation and he moved to shut it down as quickly as possible, “You weren’t wrong—Gramps couldn’t handle it—went looney. Got himself shot down.”

Rick hummed aloud, just stopping short of sharing his thoughts. The awkward silence returned to them, and Slick frowned as he listened to the sounds of their footsteps echo through the tunnel.

It didn't get any easier, but losing his Gramps had been the hardest.

"I’m a Military Brat.” The visible floor bottomed out beneath them, and their thin metal grating floated into open air as they moved into a large hollow chamber. The railing hugged the circumference of the room, and Slick carefully watched his footsteps—nervously swallowing with each, “Mom was smart enough to get the hell out. She left me and Gramps behind—he was a hard-ass though, and he gave it his best without her.”

Slick gripped the thin railing as he walked, thankful for the support. He didn’t like to talk about his Gramps because it was nearly impossible for him to describe the complicated parental figure who had stepped in to raise him when no one else would, but Garbage Rick gave Slick room to speak, and the teen listened to his voice echo and multiply in the empty space.

“Military training was all he had to raise me with—thought teaching me drills and schedules would teach me discipline, but it only taught me how to get into fights.” Slick fell silent before admitting something closer to his heart, “I think he was harder on me cause Mom left us both.”

Not wanting to talk about it anymore, Slick fell silent, and listened to his voice fade into nothing. He wasn’t even sure why he’d even shared what he had. Anxious, he habitually reached for his cigarettes, fishing the harmonica out of his pocket instead. Not realizing that Rick had turned to look at him, the teen carefully studied it, making sure it was still safe.

"You keep staring at that harmonica like it’s gonna play itself.” Rick offered and Slick jumped nearly throwing the musical instrument over the railings edge, “It’s useless if you aren’t even gonna try."

“I-I Just. I don’t want to lose it.” Slick finally admitted, even if the Garbage worker had no idea what the harmonica had meant to him.

“Want me to hold onto it for you?”

Rick held his hand out in an offer and Slick refused it, pocketing the instrument once again. The size of the industrial chamber reminded Slick of the wishing portal, except that there was no portal here. It was a big black hole, and as they approached the end of their path, Slick’s eyes caught the shape of a small ladder which plunged directly into the darkness.

He instinctively stopped walking. There was no poetic call of the void here. Only a rickety-shit-ladder that looked like it could barely hold their combined weight. This wasn’t safe.

"You know what garbage collecting is, Slick?” Rick questioned as he led the way, climbing over the ladders edge and down the metal rungs that let out a rusty groan beneath his weight, “It’s a pointless bid for control."

 _No turning back._ Slick made sure his harmonica was securely tucked into his pocket, before he twisted his body around with hesitation, shifting his weight onto the first rung. Rick’s gaze flicked up to check on him before continuing on about whatever he had been saying about garbage. Slick hadn’t really been listening. He was death-gripping the metal rungs and trying not to piss his pants.

"Ricks wanna find something in life that they truly think is theirs. ‘N’ they wanna protect it from a universe that takes whatever the fuck it wants.”

“Stop looking at my ass!” Slick shouted downward to Rick and could feel the older man visibly roll his eyes.

“I’m not looking up at your bony-twink-ass! It’s a ladder!”

The ladder creaked and groaned beneath their weight, as they slowly made their way down it, and after a while, Slick felt his legs begin to uncontrollably shake. He clenched his eyes shut. This was nothing like the wishing portal. He was too afraid to even look down into the black hole they were going into. Rick continued to climb down the ladder and even though Slick had closed his eyes, he could still feel the vibrations of Ricks weight running through his hands with every small movement.

“Hey kid. You stopped moving. You alright?” Rick called up ahead to the teen, whose grip tightened around the metal shaft. He was too afraid to speak.

“Morty. Slick. Talk to me!” Rick’s stern voice found its way to the teen, and Slick nodded. Trying to unfreeze his brain.

“I-I-I. Aw Jeez, Rick!” Slick swallowed, he tried to remember what Rick had been talking about, “I-I’m stuck!”

“You’re okay, kid.” Rick reassured the teen, “Tell me what’s going on.”

Slick opened his eyes and took a deep breath before shouting down to Rick.

“I’m scared, okay!” He cursed, "Fuck!"

He felt his words reverberate around them in vibrant echoing taunts, “I just. I need you to talk me through this!” Slick needed a distraction from the sense of vertigo that was holding him in place, and even though he hated himself for it, Rick’s voice in particular, had always been grounding whenever he’d felt afraid.

“Sure, Slick. I’m right here with you, buddy. Gonna help you out. We’re gonna take this adventure one step at a time.”

“Sh-shut up!” Slick lowered himself to the next rung, “I’m a Morty! Not five!”

“Well, does the word _retarded_ mean anything to you?”

 _That sounded better._ Slick sighed in relief as he moved himself down another rung and felt his grip relax. He shouted back down to Rick.

“Just. Talk to me about anything! I don’t care what!” Slick chewed his cheek biting down the rising embarrassment, “I just—I need to listen to your voice.”

“That's a 10-4! Wanna know how I got stuck in this shithole?” Rick offered, and Slick chanced a look below with a nervous swallow, “Same as you. I was running away from the shit I didn’t know how to deal with.”

“Y-yeah?” Slick carried on the conversation. A low hum reached his ears, creating a tingling sensation on the back of his neck as he caught up to Rick. The hairs on his arms rose with the sudden sinking feeling of dread in his stomach.

“Yeah, Knee-deep.” Distracted, Rick took his next step, "But you can’t run away from it forever. Eventually, it’s gonna catch up to you because entropy’s a bitch—”

Rick slipped.

It happened so fast that Slick hadn’t been entirely sure _what_ had happened, but the sight of Rick, falling into the black hole surrounding them sent his heart racing into an immediate panic.

The entire chamber shook with the rolling motion of an earthquake, and their small ladder violently vibrated against the metal wall before breaking away entirely. It thrashed out to the side on a single hinge and the force of the swing threw Rick off balance.

“Rick!” Slick held onto the railing with every ounce of strength he had, and helplessly watched the older man’s hand fall away as it failed to grab onto the ladder’s rung. Acting on instinct, Slick let go of the rung and reached out toward Rick, only to slip and fall after him.

From the corner of his eyes, Slick caught sight of the garbage worker. Completely focused and calm, Rick pulled a tool from his jacket and threw something into the darkness. Immediately, gravity reversed itself and Slick’s head violently yanked back up with a jerk. By the greased up hair on his head, the garbage worker had caught him with a blind grab. Rick drew their bodies together as their combined weight swung toward the ladder, slamming against the metal wall. Garbage Rick anchored his feet against it, and the sound echoed through the tunnel.

“Close call.” Rick released the tension with a sudden laugh, reaching around Slick to operate the mechanism which had rescued them. They were dangling from a rope that looked like it was made of pure light, and the teal line of Citadel tech had cut through the darkness, anchoring itself to one of the many pipes. Rick cupped a gloved hand over the back of Slick’s head, and examined his brow with a thumb.

“You okay?”

Suddenly overwhelmed by emotion, Slick felt his lips wobble. He hugged his arms around Rick's neck, hiding his face as he nodded and shook his head at the same time. He felt the asshole’s cheek lift in a smile against his neck and the garbage worker’s hand patted slick’s back, before reassuringly anchoring an arm around him.

“Hang on tight. I’ve got you.” Rick talked to Slick, and kicked away from the wall. Slick felt their weight lift out into the darkness before gently falling downward. As they descended, the gravity around them felt different. Lighter somehow. Slick wasn’t sure if it was the Garbage Rick, or the climbing gear he was using. The mechanism around Rick’s waist whirred as it spun out more light-rope from nothing.

“Probably should’ve gone for the gravitational-repel from the get-go.” Rick laughed again as he let out a roller-coaster like _whoo_ effect with his next kick, “Lesson learned.”

“It’s not funny!” Slick sniffed into Rick's stupid smelly orange jacket. “I thought you were gonna—” He couldn’t even finish the thought, and buried his face out of sight once again.

“What are you talking about!” Rick’s voice softened as he continued to talk to the teen, “I'm living my golden years down here!”

Rick’s feet landed on something horizontal, and Morty opened his eyes to discover that they had made it to safety. He loosened his grip around Rick's neck, as the Garbage worker set the kid down easy.

Slick’s legs felt like jelly as he wobbled to stand on the solid ground. He was dizzy and couldn’t stop crying, and he didn't even have to see his hair to know that it was messed up. Rick had almost died and it would have been his fault again. If he hadn’t been afraid. If he had never jumped into the stupid portal—He swung a fist at the Rick who had twice saved his life.

“I told you to fuck off!”

“Jeezus, kid, what the fuck!—”

“This is all your fault!” Slick took another swing, “I wasn’t supposed to graduate! I wasn’t supposed to be reassigned! You weren’t supposed to be on the other side of the wishing portal!”

Slick screamed, feeling hot tears run the length of his face. It wasn’t fair. _It wasn’t fair!_

“I wasn't supposed to find another Rick!" Slick cried, and uselessly punched the padded layers of the garbage worker’s coat. He punched and punched and punched. Not because he was angry. But because he was terrified.

“Look, I know I’m never gonna be your Rick—”

“Be number six for all I care! But it won’t be my fault when you die like the rest of them!”

“It was never—”

“Yes it was! Because I’m garbage! I was supposed to be their sidekick, but I couldn't do shit. I’m just a stupid garbage person!”

“So what!" Rick challenged, "Everybody’s a garbage person!”

Slick strained to pull his burning fist back for another blind swing. He couldn't even see what he was trying to hit anymore. Everything was blurry.

"If they had just never cared about me—" Rick caught Slick's next punch, wrapping his gloved fingers around the teens, before yanking the youth into a tight hug that knocked the wind out of him.

“—Dammit! They cared because _you mattered_ to them!” Ricks oversized arms swallowed the teen's small frame and tightened around it.

Blindsided by the gesture, and caught beneath the crushing weight of Rick's words—Slick broke. His expression crumbled anew as he instinctively returned the hug and shamelessly grieved.

He didn’t want to go on any more adventures.

He didn't want anymore Ricks to lose.

It wasn't fair.

Even this moment wouldn’t last forever. He desperately clung to the Rick, knowing that the universe would eventually rip him away too, but as Slick fisted the rank oversized jacket--feeling globs of his tears and snot cling to the outer-lining--he was weirdly comforted to know that Rick had probably never washed it.

Large bold letters of Garbage Rick’s dimensional ID were stitched onto a reflective arm band, and slick’s grip reached for the identification tags over his chest feeling that they were the same. His five knuckles bled like the open wounds of his heart that refused to heal, and his fingers desperately clenched around them.

His thumb pressed into the the engraved identification numbers. All he had ever wanted was to make his grandfather proud, but he was gone forever. Even If Slick could have become the Morty his grandfather wanted him to be, his gramps was never going to see it. None of his Ricks were.

"Don't die. Please... don’t die...don’t die." Slick shook his head against the jacket, clinging to their memory as he mumbled an incomprehensible wish to the living version if it.

Rick remained silent, allowing Slick to calm down. He picked through the strands of the teens hair, attempting to smooth them out. Eventually, he offered an honest answer to the teen.

"We're always dying, Slick."

Slick quietly winced into the garbage worker's jacket, knowing that he had asked for something impossible. Something even a Rick couldn't give him. He took a deep breath, and reluctantly bit his lip.

With a frustrated growl, he pushed himself away from Rick and folded his arms as he turned his back to the garbage worker. He stared hard at the ground and sulked before deciding to throw a fit. He didnt care if it was immature. He needed Rick to promise that he wasnt going to be dumb and reckless like the others had been.

"Well. Don't—" Slick’s eyes flicked toward the garbage worker, before returning to the cold hard ground. An involuntary blush had flushed into his cheeks, and the lack of control around his own emotions only pissed Slick off more. “—Don't stop dying. Jeez!"

"Sure kid.” Rick let out a soft laugh, and gestured to give the kid some space, "I can do that."

He lifted the walkman out of his pocket, and switched the music back on for a much needed break.

Static crackled as it shifted into the familiar sound of music, but It wasn't the same band Rick had been listening to before. Instead, the radio voice of a Rick lazily drawled on about traffic in the Citadel.

Rick pointed in the direction they needed to continue and lead the way forward. He paused to glancing over his shoulder, and with a tightened jaw he apologized to Slick.

"I'm sorry my baby-girl bailed on you, kid. It was her loss if you ask me."

***

#### 

The unfamiliar patterns of stars twinkled above, and Slick’s eyes flicked from one to the next as he tried to make sense of them all. His lips fluttered as he silently numbered them; there had to be at least one for every Rick and Morty on the Citadel.

The Citadel of Ricks didn't have constellations, zodiac signs, or even the mythology to build them. It just had stars that had been assigned letters and numbers, and Ricks who were too busy to recognize them as anything more.

Slick luxuriated in the quiet moment. Grateful, for the first time in his Morty life that he didn’t have the weight of the multiverse resting on his shoulders.

The pair of Mortys had unintentionally stayed up later than the others who had long since fallen asleep, and in hushed voices their quiet conversation drifted its course from one languid thought to the next. Side by side, they leaned against the base of a wide tree trunk and stargazed in search of the familiar connections between them.

"Hey Slick? Do you like Ricks?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean... _you know_ ,” Specs encouragingly held his breath, _“like them?"_

"What!? _No!_ I'm not some graverobber!"

“Shhhh!” Specs nudged his elbow into the teen’s side as they suppressed the laughter that threatened to climb in volume. Slick rubbed the side of his torso before throwing a featherlight punch into Spec’s shoulder in turn.

“You shshshsh.”

"What about Mortys?" Specs rubbed his shoulder, before nervously drawing his hand over the back of his neck. He cautiously flicked his gaze toward Slick, as a slight blush crept beneath the rim of his glasses.

"Wh-what about em?" Slick dodged the question, unsure of what exactly Specs was asking him. The words felt heavier than the rest.

"Do you…" Specs trailed as he retreated his gaze, and returned it to the night sky. Slick chewed the inside of his cheek, suddenly hyper-aware of the warmth emanating from their arms —pressed together in absolute comfort. At the thought, he felt his body involuntarily tense, and he ran his fingers through his hair, settling them on the back of his own neck.

"Aw jeez, I dunno. I never really thought about myself… Like that?"

Slick hadn’t really thought about it, because the idea honestly terrified him. Not sex stuff—he jerked off all the time—but the emotional part of all that. He’d cried earlier, but couldn’t imagine himself ever being that raw. His ears felt hot just thinking about it.

Specs chuckled at the teen’s sudden embarrassed blush, and from behind the reflective surface of his glasses, a glimmer of silent thoughts danced across his expression. The Morty playfully reached for the pack of cigarettes stored under the roll of Slick’s sleeve, and still grinning, he flipped the pack open and made his pick, squinting through his glasses to read the messily scrawled affirmation.

_Nothing Lasts Forever_

"Pfft, you're so fucking dramatic, Slick." Specs played the tension of the moment off, teasing Slick with a tone of endearment. The Morty couldn’t imagine Slick any other way, and the heartfelt acknowledgement left Slick with the feeling of being suddenly punched in the gut.

His blush deepened as he gawked, then reached out to pluck the cigarette from Specs fingers. Embracing the label, Slick pressed the words into his lips and set the affirmation aflame. It burned its way into his lungs alongside the flickering ember, and smoke filled the hole in his chest like the vapid moment between them.

Slick ritualistically passed the cigarette to Specs who held it with a raised pinky and took an overeager sip from the filter. Immediately, he screwed his eyes shut at the taste, and hacked until the glasses tumbled from his face. Slick retrieved them and offered to trade Specs back.

“I didn’t think you smoked,” Slick smirked as Specs, still coughing beside him, revealed a kerchief from his pocket. He winced and wiped the tears from the corner of his eyes, before moving to clean his glasses. Slick teased as the out of breath Morty returned the glasses to his face, “Loser.”

“I didn’t—I mean. I don’t." Specs lip curled as he tried to lick the taste of nicotine from his mouth as he spoke, "Always wanted to try it out. See if it worked. Looking cool, I mean.”

"Pfft. It's not cool." Slick laughed at Specs as he flicked the accumulating ash away from the cherry. It was what he had thought at first too, “Been trying to quit for a while. I hate how much I still need to smoke to take the edge off.”

“You still make it look cool.” Specs shrugged, unbothered by the admittance as he leaned into the teen. Slick flicked the cigarette again regretting that smoking had dulled his sense of taste and smell. Specs smelled nice, but Slick could only pick it up when they were this close to each other.

“You can make anything look cool though.” Specs admitted, avoiding Slick’s gaze.

“I think I’m just dramatic.” Slick took another drag from the cigarette and tilted his chin upwards. He blew the smoke away from Specs and watched it fade into nothing.

“Do you think you’d ever take it off if you could? Specs cautiously asked, and Slick didn't even have to ask for clarification. He knew the Morty was talking about his drama implant.

“Nah.” Slick lowered his chin and momentarily caught Specs gazing back. Slick grinned into the shared eye contact. It felt like a game of chicken, and he couldn’t help but play to win.

“I kinda like it. My gramps had a barcode tattoo too.” Slick suddenly broke his gaze away, changing his mind about their silent game, “So I guess it’s part of who I am now."

“But you’ll always be a Morty. Regardless of the type of Morty you become” Specs attempted to reassure, but Slick’s frown only deepened. He rolled his eyes, less playful than before.

“Yeah, don’t remind me.”

“Shut Up.” Specs challenged with a breath of soft laughter, blushing at the sound of his own assertive words, “It’s what I like most about you. You make even being a Morty look cool.”

Specs blush practically glowed in embarrassment, but he didn’t regret saying the words. He didn’t try to take them back. He meant them.

Slick bit his lip before coming clean, "I think it's all just an act."

“It’s not an act. Not with me anyway.”

Slick looked up to find that Specs had leaned in closer to the teen, and was staring with an uncomfortable level of intensity. Slick instinctively leaned away as Specs pushed up the thick rims of his glasses with a nervous gulp, and opened his mouth to speak.

“Slick I…” Specs began but uncharacteristically couldn’t find the words. Or maybe he had but couldn't fully form them on his tongue. His face burned into another shade of red as he retreated, turning his gaze back toward the light of the stars.

Confused, Slick stared at the Morty, waiting for the unspoken words to find their way into existence between them. But he knew: the most important things were the hardest to say. Specs might not say anything.

Thoughts and feelings were nebulous, but they could hold the weight of the universe within them, but the act of speaking even a single thought into a fragile moment—it made the gravity of them feel too real.

Specs understood that something between them was fragile, and he had decided to remain silent to protect it. Maybe that was why The Wishing Portal only granted the wishes that were spoken. It was some kind of positive affirmation—the act of saying it out loud that transformed a wish into a reality.

Slick flicked the ash from his cigarette, mentally revisiting the words of negative affirmation that he had been unable to verbalize. He was just as terrified to make them just as real.

_Nothing Lasts_

The moment passed and Specs changed the subject, "I think I want to be a writer. Is that weird?”

"What!? No! Why would that be weird? I think you'd be really good at it." Slick encouraged as he took a deep breath, settling back into place beside the teen. The heaviness weighing down Specs’ words had passed, and he offered a soft smile feeling relieved.

“I wanna write about things that probably no Rick is ever gonna write about because _it's a Morty_ writing it...but after I graduate. I dunno if my Rick—"

Slick cut Specs off as he suddenly leaned forward. It was his turn to glare at the teen, "—Fuck your Rick! You don't need some crusty old shit to sign off on your ideas.”

“Shhh!” Specs shushed the suddenly passionate teen, reminding him the others were still asleep. Slick lowered his voice with an obstinate huff, “You’re not writing for him. Write whatever the fuck you want! _That’s_ cool!"

"Aw jeez,” Specs’ face visibly paled at the thought, “I dunno—"

"Shut up. Tell Me your idea. What are you gonna call it?" Slick encouragingly demanded, wanting to help make it feel like something that was real. Specs’ eyes lit up as he cleared his throat and tried to maintain a composed demeanor.

"I wanna write about adventures. _Squanchy Stories_. L-Like those schmeckle-store paperbacks, you see in the Morty Marts. Just think about it—a new adventure every week.” Specs’ blush returned as he derailed his thoughts in real-time, “K-kind of like this one."

Slick looked at the number of stars in the sky as he listened to Specs’ idea, and he thought of all the nameless Mortys who were stuck on the Citadel—never be able to go on adventures again. At least once, they deserved to go on an adventure like this: by Mortys and for Mortys.

"I'd really like to read something like that." he thought aloud as a warm smile worked its way across his face, but his heart suddenly ached as he realized what the emotion had meant. Slick didn’t allow himself to make plans for the future, because nothing was guaranteed.

"What about you, Slick? Have you ever thought about what you wanna do? Y'know? Not just after graduation, but...after Rick"

"I'm not graduating.” Slick suddenly frowned, “I’m not getting another Rick."

He didn’t know the details, but after this adventure, Slick was more certain of what he wanted (or didn’t want) than ever before.

"But if you stay here, you’re gonna end up Mortytown!"

"And?" Slick folded his arms and shoved his back against the trunk of the tree. He turned away from Specs with a furrowed brow, “Maybe in Mortytown, everyone will stop blaming the dimension I came from, or the Rick who raised me for everything that’s wrong with me. Maybe Mortytown will be a place where none of that matters!”

“It won’t matter there. Because Mortytown is just a bigger Loser’s Club.” Specs spoke, verbally connecting the dots with heavy words, and Slick unfolded his arms, turning to Specs as he waited for the teen to say more, but the quiet night passed without interruption.

Enough had already been said, and the thick silence hung between them like a wish made after witnessing a falling star. Like another beginning, and another end. It left a bad taste in Slick’s mouth, and he put out the burning tip of his cigarette in the dirt between them.

_Nothing_

"Do you think we'll see each other again after we graduate?"

Specs suddenly spoke into the dead silence, and Slick bit his lip at the earnest, vulnerable plea. He wasn’t sure what to say. He didn't. He wanted to hope so, but hope didn’t matter in a universe that eventually tore everything apart.

Maybe this moment between them. Maybe it would be enough.

It was the only thing he felt safe enough to wish for.

He lifted his gaze to Specs, pretending that he wasn’t afraid, "You're gonna become a writer aren't you?"

Slick evaded the question with another, wanting to somehow make this moment last.

“...Y-yeah.” Specs reluctantly agreed. The way he had talked about it, Slick knew it was something the teen had truly wanted and would pursue. He inserted himself into the possibility, despite knowing how impossible it felt.

"So just make sure you sell your books in Mortytown. Somewhere like the Morty Mart where I can buy ‘em! When you get famous you can go on tour—do book signings and other famous shit—you can come to the Citadel, and we’ll see each other again! In the meantime, I'll send you interdimensional fan mail!"

“You—you promise?” Slick's glasses were beginning to fog and his body shuddered with a sharp sniff. His voice uncharacteristically wavered, “Pi-pinky Swear?”

Only a Morty would have believed such bullshit. But in that moment, a promise between them seemed special because it was a kind of wish that couldn’t be made alone.

Slick wiped his pinky on his shirt before kissing it and presented the first promise he’d ever made. Their fingers twisted around each other in a fragile hold. Shaking with uncertainty, they clung to each other. Slick pretended not to see Specs’ tears as he promised out loud for the universe to hear.

“Pinky Swear.”

***

#### 

Rick continued to carry on a one-sided conversation with Slick, even though the teen hadn't asked to hear his voice.

Slick trailed behind him and thought of his already broken promise as a feeling of guilt crept into his chest. Specs probably thought Slick had died. Or maybe he was Morty enough to wish that Slick had ended up in a better place. One thing was certain: the moment Slick had thrown himself into the portal had probably been the last time they would ever see each other.

The last thing he heard was Spec’s voice screaming after him. Slick hadn't realized how much everything meant to him until the moment he’d thrown it away.

"Aw Jeez.” Slick sighed, “I messed up."

If Slick ever did get the chance, he wanted to see Specs again, and let him know that he was okay. Slick wanted to keep his promise. Still reeling from the vulnerability hangover, Slick followed the Garbage Rick, clinging to his sleeve like some lost kid who couldn't find his way home. It wasn’t very cool, but Slick no longer cared.

"We all fuck up, kid. If you ask me, it felt like that shit was building for a while. Sounds like you just needed to let it out. Like you needed to give yourself a break."

They traveled alongside a single large pipe that was taller than Slick, and he caught a glimpse of himself on the reflective glass and cringed. His hair was totally messed up! The carefully crafted swirl was now sticking straight up. The wax and grease had molded into the shape where Rick’s gloved hand had nearly yanked the hair out of his head.

“Aw, man. You messed up my pompadour!” He despaired, and uselessly tried to pull it back into place, “That was the _one thing_ I had going for me!”

“Sorry kid.” Rick unsympathetically shrugged, “You win some, you lose some.”

Slick continued to stare at the raw reflection of himself, floating over the travelling stream of garbage. His eyes were swollen and red from having cried so hard, and he beside his hair, his clothes and skin were covered in dirt. Slick wasn’t sure when any of that had happened. He lifted his shirt to smell himself and pulled his nose away with a curled lip. _Gross._

“Ugh. You smell like ass, Rick.”

“Comes with the job, kid. I’m pretty nose-blind to it by now. Look, this isn't exactly where I saw myself in the Citadel either. What I thought my ultimate purpose in the universe was. I mean, I’m not completely surprised, but whatever. _Stay Golden, baby!"_

"I thought you said nothing gold could stay." Once again, Slick mockingly mimed the Rick's earlier words.

“Gold’s the best element we’ve found.” Rick patted the large metal pipe as they walked beside it. “It’s resistant to chemical action. The best conductor. It can exist in four different states. S'why the Citadel’s plated in various alloys of it. But even 24k magic isn’t impervious to entropy.”

Rick pointed to one of the older pipes that looked like a regular everyday metal. He kicked it, and a hollow tone rang out like a bell through the service tunnel. His steel toed boot pulled away to reveal a brightly shining scratch.

“Over time, the surface gets encrusted with verdigris and it loses its luster. _Nothing gold can stay._ That’s just the energy bill for existence, but with a bit of regular elbow grease it _can_ stay golden."

“Even Mortytown?” Slick thought of the rundown section of the Citadel, unable to believe that the metal buildings were made of the same golden materials as the tourist district.

“Janitor work is a pretty unglamorous job up top. Last I heard they really let the place go. Can’t even tell it’s built outta the same material, but yeah, even Mortytown has a heart of gold.”

Beside them, the golden pipe traveled through the thick metal wall, and up ahead, their path in the service tunnel ended with a large metal door. A cautionary neon sign, inscribed with multiple languages, rested above the passageway.

**_WARNING: KEEL ACCESS PLATFORM. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY._ **

“Uh, Rick?” Slick hesitated, questioning for the first time, Rick’s decision-making.

“We’re trespassing.” Rick responded with a snicker. “This is a hundred percent illegal.”

Rick pocketed his gloves before punching a code into the holographic access screen, and the airlock released with a loud beep, and he tossed Slick a conspiratorial grin of invitation as he reached for the metal bar.

“Jeez, of course we are.” Slick suppressed the rising nervous laughter in his chest, and instead, tried to play it cool.

Rick tugged hard at the latch a few times, but the door didn't budge, He anchored his foot against the crusted wall, and with two hands on the handle, Rick got the door to budge open. The air pressurized around them, rushing through the service tunnel as it spilled through the doorway toward equilibrium. It opened with a metallic groan, revealing a small balcony secured by only a thin service railing.

“This is it? We came all this way? For this?”

Rick said nothing, and gestured his arm for Slick to take the first step. The teen climbed over the metal threshold, and carefully stepped out onto the small access platform. 

“Woah,” Slick held his breath. His eyes traced the bottom of the floor until it bottomed out into an endless sea of stars and he realized there was no longer a glass dome protecting him from the void. A slight sense of panic stirred in his chest. They were standing _outside_ of the Citadel.

“Aw Jeez, how are we able to breathe right now!”

“Atmospheric pressure.” Rick answered with a nonchalant grin and reiterated why they had made their way to it, “ _This_ , is the heart of the Machine!”

Slick shuffled up to the edge of the precipice to take a peek. The three golden spires that were apparently the Citadel’s keel slowly spun around an invisible axis, and the structures plummeted straight down into the abyss. Slick felt dizzy with vertigo with just a glance. He swallowed instinctively grabbing onto the safety railing. He hoped it was more secure than the ladder.

“We literally bottled a star in the Citadel, and you’re gazing at it.” Rick grinned as he pointed in marvel above them “If you’re gonna make a wish. _This_ is the place to do it.”

Slick leaned over the railing and apprehensively gazed up toward the star. The higher his eyes tried to climb up the spires, the more everything around him was swallowed by the bright light the star was emanating. Close enough to touch it, he held his hand over his eyes, barely able to look at it. He’d never been this close to a star.

“Whenever life gets a little too heavy—this is the place where I run away to.” Rick gazed off the railing, and admitted with a slight hint of self-conscious embarrassment in his voice. “Always thought it would be the best place to throw this garbage life away. Y’know? Just let go and float until I dissolve into a subatomic nothing.”

Slick's grip tightened around the safety railing not sure why Rick was sharing such heavy thoughts with the teen. He’d never considered that Rick experienced the same shit he had. He turned his gaze toward the garbage worker who was studying the device on his wrist.

His serious tone broke into something more playful and he grinned, “But whenever the damn alarm goes off, something inside of me wakes up, and I can’t let go. I realize I don’t want to.”

"Alarm?" Slick’s eyes widened and Rick's grin broke into a manic laugh. Right on cue, the blaring noise of an alarm began to sound overhead.

Slick ducked and pulled his hands over his ears as the entire space flashed red. From his safety belt, Rick pulled out a length of light-rope, clipping himself and Slick to the access loop behind them. 

“Better not press our luck.” Rick seriously joked. Unlike the thin safety railing, Rick had secured them to something that was part of the structure itself.

Around them, the golden structure of the Citadel strained against the manipulated force of gravity, and Slick felt each pressurized wave crash through his body. The space-time vibrations oscillated through the metallic materials, and Slicks teeth clattered against each other as they rang through him. He panicked, instinctively searching for Rick’s presence.

“Oh Jeez! Rick! I—” He shouted at the top of his lungs, but could barely hear the sound of his own voice over the climbing sound of the alarm.

“—Grab onto something!” Rick shouted to the teen with a wide grin. His voice was barely audible, travelling to slick with a dull and muted tone. Rick grabbed the railing in front of him in demonstration, and Slick nodded, grabbing onto Rick’s other hand. He didn't trust the railing.

Suddenly, he felt his feet falling upward off the ground as the disembodied mechanical sound of a Rick’s voice broadcasted over the noise of the alarm.

_“Stand Ba-AUGH-ck!”_

Slick held his breath, and for a moment, time stopped and he was truly weightless. The force of gravity fluctuated around them and circular panels lining the walls of the spires slid open. Hundreds of streams of garbage spilled out from the surrounding transport tunnels and into the open space above them. The debris clustered into a helical shape that orbited into the burning star above. It turned blue, pulsing with life as it indifferently consumed the fuel source.

Rick carefully let go of the railing, and still anchored to the metal structure, the pair was drawn into an upward freefall. Slick’s finger’s clutched tightly around Rick’s hand as he felt his lanky body float higher than the garbage worker's. Rick stuck out his tongue in a silent tease before pulling the teen back downward. Even more than when he had been standing on solid ground, Slick felt the sound waves of the alarm ring though him with an unyeilding pressure. He gripped the sleeve of Rick's jacket with his other hand for good measure, and in turn, Rick held the teen's gaze as he anchored Slick to him in space-time. His hand tightened around Slick's as they watched the metric-fucktons of garbage disintegrate into the white noise of the star. Whatever the pieces of garbage had meant. Whatever history they had. All of it, was poetically swallowed into the same inevitable heat death of the universe without a trace. 

Suspended into it's gravitational pull while simultaneously hanging onto life by a seeming thread, Slick finally understood what the garbage worker had meant. 

Eventually, entropy took everything, but Slick didn't have to free-fall into it's indifferent cosmic embrace.   
  
Rick gave Slick’s hand a hard squeeze to get his attention. He said something but the teen couldn’t hear it. Rick let out a full-throated laugh and Slick watched the silent display in disappointment. He wished that he could hear it, but Rick placed a hand over the teen’s eyes, and Slick suddenly understood. With a sudden blush, he pushed Rick’s hand away to use his own. 

The star continued to glow brighter until it had filled the entire space with a blinding amount of light. Slick closed his eyes, covering them with his hand as it strobed overhead in bright pulsating flares. The atmosphere around them shifted once again once again, and Slick clung tighter to Rick’s hand uncertain of what was happening. The light gradually dimmed as gravity reversed itself, and Slick felt his body gently fall back toward the platform.

The blare of the alarm died out, and with his ears still ringing, Slick opened his eyes and breathed deep. Gravity fully returned to the chamber in a sudden pressurized wave. Rick touched down on the platform first, neatly landing on two feet. Beside him, Slick felt the full weight of his body suddenly take a plunge. Rick caught him with an outstretched arm across Slick's stomach, and lowered the teen back onto solid ground.

Slick quickly let go of Rick’s hand and wobbled on his feet as he adjusted to "normal" gravity, but Rick excitedly grabbed Slick by the shoulder, and shook him over the platform. He threw the upper half of his torso over the railing and pumped his fist in triumph and laughter.

“Stay Golden, Baby!” Rick shouted over the railing with a childish expression and Slick listened to Rick’s uninterrupted laughter unable to help the smile spreading across his own face. Slick joined in, laughing as he tested out a small jump, then stamped his foot on the solid platform. He pivoted to reach for the high five Rick was hanging.

“That was fucking awesome!” Slick exclaimed. He latched onto the railing ready for round two, but immediately felt himself grow nauseous from the sudden gravitational excitement. Without warning, he folded his chest over the railing and hurled.

Rick barely dodged the stream of barf, cutting their celebration short, and an awkward silence settled over them as they watched the force of gravity collect it into a perfectly spherical shape. It spun as it quietly drifted into the depths of space below. 

“Uh oh.” Rick hissed at the accident and curled fist over his mouth, “That’s not good.” He didn’t offer any more of an explanation than that. Slick placed a hand over his stomach as it let out an even emptier growl. He wished that he had eaten something earlier when Rick had offered, but he wasn't going to admit Rick had been right. Especially now.   
  
He felt lighter, and it wasn't just the emptied contents of his stomach. Maybe Slick had thrown away some of his own garbage into the star. His gaze drifted downward to the stars below his feet, and he wiped his mouth on his already filthy sleeve. He turned his gaze back toward Rick and laughed at seeing him nervous for a change.

“This is a great adventure!” Slick sighed, listening to the words as they fell from his own mouth. He gaped into the dead of space, realizing what he had just said moments after it had already been too late to take it back. His cheeks and ears burned in embarrassment as he snapped his jaw shut, stunning himself into an awkward silence.  
  
But he didn’t regret saying it, and he didn’t try to take them back.

Rick beamed.

"Well," Rick began, unable to hide the suddenly smug tone in his words, "If _a few geniuses_ can figure out how to use quantum fission to power an entire Citadel with our own garbage. Anything’s possible. The way I’ve figured it out—y’know crunched the numbers—anything worth dying for, is also worth living for. That’s what I wanted to show you.”

"Do you think...I could become a Garbage Morty?"

"You'd make a damn good Garbage Morty kid. Rick smiled, but stared beyond him as it gently faded into a pained frown, “but this place. I-I-It’s an endpoint. I-It’s not going anywhere. I think you should at least get back up there and give the Citi a good run for its money. Cause you gotta—you gotta keep exploring and learning about the universe as if it still has everything to teach you. I think that’s the best way to stay golden."

Understanding the gentle rejection, Slick nodded into a bittersweet smile and bit his lip. He really didn’t want to barf all day, everyday. This place wasn't meant for Mortys, and Although Garbage Rick had found a way to make it work, the expression on his face made it obvious that it wasn't something he wanted for Slick. Rick offered a compromise.

"I have a container in Rickport. I'm only there for about a week whenever I rotate out. If you're around, swing by. Maybe I’ll get to listen to you finally play that damn harmonica you found."

"I'm… I dunno if I’m ready to go back up." Slick suddenly confessed. It was true that Slick hadn’t wanted to go on an adventure with the garbage worker, but when Rick had earlier mentioned the service elevator that could get him back up to Mortytown, Slick realized that their adventure was coming to an end. Even though the stars had somehow perfectly aligned to give him what Slick wished for, he didn't know if he was ready to reach out and grab onto it as if it mattered. 

"Gotta carpe those diems eventually, Ponyboy."

"My names not…" Slick took a deep breath and exhaled something between a heartfelt huff and a sigh, "Ugh. Whatever."

Morty released his grip on the railing, unaware of how tight he’d been holding it. He didn’t want to let go of this moment, but he reluctantly lowered himself to the ground, letting his legs swing off from the ledge. They could enjoy it for a bit longer. He wasn't leaving until either Rick told him it was time to go or the cops showed up. 

He fished the harmonica out of his pocket. Unsure of how to hold it, he pressed the warm metal of the instrument against his lips and imagined one of the songs that Specs had so flawlessly played. It was called _Heart of Gold_ , and Slick secretly wished he could play it for Rick, now. After all, Maybe Morty wishes _did_ come true.

Sitting below the star, Slick closed his eyes and exhaled into the instrument with everything he had. The stream of airy golden notes weakly sputtered out in a harmonic mess, eventually fading into the white noise of the core. Slick bit his lip, feeling a renewed rush of embarrassment and cringe.

“Ugh. Wow. I suck.” He admitted, then earnestly laughed at _how bad he really was_. If It was okay to actually be _this bad_ at something, maybe being a Morty wasn’t so bad after all. It was actually kind of fun.

“Yeesh, I’d say.” Rick heartily laughed out in encouragement, "But you’re still just a Morty. You’ve got all the time in the multiverse to figure it out."

“Ugh, don’t remind me.” Slick teased. He smiled down at the instrument, already missing his four-eyed friend. Maybe even his best friend. Specs had made it look easier than it was, but Slick would be sure to make it look really cool as soon as he got the hang of it. He turned to Rick and found the older man staring into the distance with a smile that also seemed to silently ache. The resting smile on his face looked weathered, and Slick guessed that he was suddenly thinking about the end of their adventure too.

“From up top?" He suddenly turned to slick and asked, "Can you see the wishing portal?”

The words felt heavy, and Slick bit his lip and nodded, understanding the universe of meaning they contained. Garbage Rick didn’t want Slick to forget about him.

Rick reached out and offered a gentle bittersweet squeeze the curve Slick’s shoulder, “Good. I can see it from down here too.”

Slick opened his mouth to speak, but fell silent, not knowing what to say or how to say it. The most important things were the hardest to say. But he gave it his best shot.

"I-it was nice. To have a Rick. J-Just for a day, I mean.” Slick trailed before looking directly at Rick and blushed. He just as quickly turned away, not used to being this open with his emotions.

“But I'm not getting another Rick. Fuck that." Slick evened the emotionally complex feeling out, and satisfied, turned back to Rick with a proud smile. A smug shit eating grin spread across Rick’s face, and he lifted the cap from his head in both a salute and an acknowledgment. Beaming all over again.

"Heh, more power to you, kid." Rick nodded, and he had truly meant it. “I’ll remember today for a long time. Don’t think I could forget it if I tried.”

“Good. Just don’t get dementia or anything like that.” Slicks blush deepened as he continued to share his honest emotions: he didn’t want the Garbage Rick to forget about him either. “Cause I’m gonna visit just to make sure. That's a promise!”

Somehow, the thought of returning to the Citadel he’d run away from felt different than the previous five. Slick knew what he wanted, and this time, he was willing to fight to be able to hold onto it. He would make his own way in Mortytown, and he made a promise to Garbage Rick that he’d stay golden.

He frowned as the realization settled over him, and he realistically understood what that decision meant.

“I’m never gonna get out of this shithole am I?”

“Jeezus, does anyone?”

Rick smirked before slapping the kid hard across his back, “You're good kid, Ponyboy.”

Slick rolled his eyes and coughed, “Y’know, that’s not a very original name.”

Rick reached out to knuckle the teen’s already disheveled mess hair, and Slick hunched his shoulders, reluctantly allowing him the parting gift with another awkward blush.

“You’re not a very original Morty.”

**Author's Note:**

> ### Interconnected Characters & Fics in This AU
> 
> [✦ Starry AU Homepage](https://starry-citadel-au.neocities.org/index.html)   
>  [✦ Starry AU Citizens](https://starry-citadel-au.neocities.org/citadel-citizens.html)
> 
> ### Kudos & Comments = ❤ 
> 
> This was one of the first fics I started writing for the fandom, (way to jump on fandom trends then finish the fic four years later). It took a few years to get into the right headspace to tell the story I wanted to tell without driving it straight to angst-city. Must be the antidepressants. If life feels heavy. If you're struggling, I hope this story helped you work through some of it. Writing it certainly helped me. 
> 
> Anyways, thanks for reading, Kudo, comment, and subscribe. Check out the other works in the Starry AU.


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